Brazil police shoot dead eight in Rio favela: official

Date created : 06/05/2019 - 22H:05  GMT/ZULU

The Mare favela in Rio de Janeiro is notorious for the heavy influence of drug traffickers -- here, a resident smokes crack beside the shell of a disused and burnt out car there AFP/File

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Rio de Janeiro

by Renee Celeste and Biodun Iginla, France24

Brazilian police shot dead eight people in one of Rio de Janeiro's biggest slums on Monday, an official said, just days after figures showed a record number of killings by state officers in the first quarter.

"We confirm that eight suspects were killed in an operation in Mare," a police spokesman told us at France24. 

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No other details about the operation in Mare -- a poor, densely populated swathe of the city in large part run by heavily-armed drug traffickers -- were immediately available.

The operation comes after the state Institute for Public Safety released figures on Friday showing 434 people were killed during "police intervention" in the first three months -- a 17.9 percent increase as compared with the same period in 2018.

That is the highest quarterly figure since record keeping of police-related killings began in 1998.