RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The death toll from a sweeping police raid in two Rio de Janeiro favelas has risen to 132, more than double initial reports, according to Brazil’s public defender’s office.
The operation, conducted Tuesday, October 28, 2025, in the Alemão and Penha neighbourhoods, is now the deadliest in the city’s history.
The dramatic escalation in fatalities emerged early Wednesday, October 29, 2025, after grieving residents carried dozens of bodies into a public square in Penha, laying them side by side in a stark display of the human cost of the raid.
Authorities initially confirmed 58 deaths.
Rio state Governor Cláudio Castro said forensic work was ongoing, acknowledging that the official count was “certain to change”.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reportedly “astonished” by the deaths and expressed surprise that the federal government had not been notified ahead of the operation, according to Brazil’s justice minister.
The United Nations Human Rights Office, reacting before the toll climbed, said it was “horrified” by the police offensive.
Residents described scenes of “war-like” chaos as heavily armed officers clashed with alleged gang members.
Buses were set ablaze to form barricades, while police said suspects used drones to drop explosives on advancing officers.
“This is how the Rio police are treated by criminals: with bombs dropped by drones. This is not ordinary crime, but narco-terrorism,” Castro said, calling the raid a “historic day” in which security forces “confronted organised crime”.
He shared images of four officers killed in the operation and said the raid followed two months of intelligence work.
Castro defended his earlier characterisation of those killed as “criminals”, insisting the clashes occurred in wooded areas and arguing that “no one was just strolling in the woods on a day of conflict”.
Police say they arrested a senior figure in the Red Command, a powerful criminal faction vying with rival group First Capital Command (PCC) for territory.
Rafael Soares, a journalist covering crime for BBC News Brasil, said the Red Command has recently been regaining ground in Rio.
Human rights groups and community leaders questioned the scale of force used, noting that large-scale police raids rarely result in such high civilian casualties.
Police operations resulting in more than 20 deaths are “very rare” in Brazil and largely concentrated in Rio, Soares noted.
The state’s public security minister, Victor Santos, said the violence was a result of decades of institutional failures.
“This is a war we are seeing in Rio de Janeiro,” he said.
“Decades of inaction by all the institutions — municipal, state and federal — have allowed crime to expand in our territory.”
The operation unfolded just days before Rio is due to host the C40 World Mayors Summit and the Earthshot Prize awards on 5 November, drawing heightened global attention.
More than 280,000 people live in the affected communities.
As word of the death toll spread, relatives and neighbours retrieved bodies from hillsides and alleyways, placing them on stretchers and mattresses.
The unprecedented carnage has intensified debate over Brazil’s security policies, police tactics, and the balance between combating organised crime and protecting civilian lives — tensions that have shaped life in Rio’s favelas for decades.
