Army heads to Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro after schools, businesses and a major road closed during fighting between drug gang members and police

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

After almost a week of intense gun battles between rival drug gangsters and the police, Brazil’s army has been deployed to encircle the sprawling Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro.

A spokesperson for military command said on Friday that airspace over the neighbourhood had been closed, and local media showed images of soldiers arriving in the community.

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Fighting flared up on Friday morning and a widely circulated video showed gunmen in shorts firing machine guns, rifles and pistols in an alleyway.



Piles of garbage were set on fire on Rocinha streets, and schools, businesses and a major road tunnel closed. Residents told the Guardian they have been cowering indoors, exchanging information via social media and WhatsApp.



“Today we woke up early and there was a lot of conflict,” said Cleber Araujo, 37, who works in a community project in Rocinha. “Nobody will risk themselves on the street.”

Brazil’s minister of defence, Raul Jungmann, said that 950 soldiers would be deployed in and around the community.

“You have a patient in intensive care,” Jungmann told reporters, according to the O Globo newspaper. He denied that the government had been slow to respond to a crisis that began at 6am last Sunday when dozens of gang members first invaded the favela.

iG Último Segundo (@ultimosegundo) Governo autoriza Exército na Rocinha após novos tiroteios e apelo de Pezão → pic.twitter.com/f8qPJBaTK4

A teeming city in itself of commerce, winding alleys and busy, narrow streets, Rocinha is the biggest favela in Brazil.

It became emblematic of an ambitious “pacification” programme to expel armed drug gangs following an invasion by the army in 2011. Now it has become another symbol of the city’s worsening violence, just a year after it hosted the Olympics.

During the 2011 invasion the area’s ruling drug lord Antônio Bonfim Lopes – AKA “Nem” – was arrested fleeing the area in the boot of a car.

Nem – who featured in the bestselling book Nemesis by Misha Glenny – is now serving a prison sentence in the far north of Brazil, but Brazilian media and sources within Rocinha believe he is behind the recent violence.

Nem is believed to have teamed up with gang members from three other favelas who tried to retake Rocinha after his former lieutenant Rogério da Silva, known as “Rogério 157”, allegedly broke ranks and stopped obeying orders.



The violence has compounded a sense of insecurity in Rio. The state government is broke and behind on police salaries, its former governor Sérgio Cabral is in jail and has just been handed a 45-year jail sentence for corruption, money laundering and racketeering.

The first sign of the latest conflict came last Friday night, when an audio recording was circulated on WhatsApp, warning residents of an invasion the following night.



Early on Sunday, a four-hour gun battle broke out, and since then sporadic gun battles have broken out between gang members and the police.



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As the violence flared, thousands of schoolchildren have been unable to attend school and health centres have stayed shut.



On Friday afternoon, after an army helicopter landed in Rocinha, residents reported an uneasy calm had descended. But they expressed fears that troops would not be able to restore order.

The Brazilian armed forces were deployed in Rio streets during last year’s Olympics, and again in July this year. But they have been criticised for increasing tension and violence.

“They are not trained to do policing, to work on the streets in urban areas. They are trained to fire, shoot first and ask questions afterwards,” said Araujo. “This is a place with a lot of people, you have to take care, there are a lot of narrow alleys.”