Police have released composite sketches of two suspects in the rampage killing of 30 people, while families buried the victims amid sobs and cries for justice. Rogue police were the main suspects.
The slayings took place over the course of about an hour Thursday night in the poor, squalid suburbs of Nova Iguacu and Queimados on the outskirts of this city.
The killings were shockingly brutal even for this city, which has one of the world's highest murder rates, and where massacres occur with disturbing frequency. The death toll was higher than the 1993 Vigario Geral police massacre of 10 people.
PHOTO: AP
On Friday evening, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva issued a statement calling the killings "barbarous and cowardly."
"The government will spare no effort together with state and municipal authorities to find and punish those responsible for this crime," the statement read.
Justice Minster Thomas Bastos, announced that federal police would provide all the necessary support to state police investigating the crime.
"It is no consolation, but what we can say about this crime is that it will not go unpunished," Bastos told reporters in Brasilia, the nation's capital.
Bastos said that it was too early to say with certainty that the killings were carried out by corrupt police who had formed an extermination squad, as state officials were insisting.
"We must follow all lines of investigation," Bastos said.
Early Friday, Rio de Janeiro state security secretary Marcelo Itagiba said the crime was most likely the work of police disgruntled over the arrest of eight officers caught on video dumping two bodies.
But many here said that could not explain or justify the killing of so many, including five adolescents and one woman.
"The state is guilty. All this over eight police being arrested?" asked Sandro Alves de Paulo, a 35-year-old electrician, whose 14-year-old son Douglas was among the victims.
According to witnesses, at around 10pm the gunmen got out of a silver Volkswagen and fired on the crowd at a street-corner bar. Fifteen people were found dead in and around the bar and three more victims died of their injuries in the hospital Friday.
The gunmen, perhaps joined by a second car, then cruised to the nearby Queimados neighborhood where they killed an additional 12 people in two separate shootings.
Roger Ancillotti, chief of the police forensics unit, said most of the victims had been shot in the head, neck or chest, suggesting a highly professional job.
"They were firing out the windows as they left so no one would look at them," said a resident who would only identify himself as Joao.
The youngest victim was 13-year-old Felipe Soares Carlos, who had just returned from school.
"He went out to play with his friends and minutes later I heard shots," said his 17-year-old sister, Priscila. "I went out and saw a lot of bodies stretched out on the street and then I saw my brother. I touched him and his eyes rolled over and I knew he was dead."
Sobbing and angrily demanding justice, families of the victims flocked to the Austin Cemetery in Nova Iguacu for the funerals that began late Friday. Many held up pictures of their slain relatives.
"He went to get cigarettes. I heard shots and went to see what happened. My son was dead," said Rosa Maria Silva, whose 19-year-old son Jonas was among the victims.
Several federal and state lawmakers also attended the funeral. Federal human rights secretary Nilmario Miranda called the crime "barbarous."
"Experience has shown that this type of crime is always carried out by the underworld of the police apparatus," said Jorge Piciani, president of the Rio de Janeiro state assembly.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS