SAO PAULO VIOLENCE





DIRCEAU PORTUGAL/AP PHOTO
Prisoners hold a guard hostage with a knife at the Campo Mourao, in Parana, Brazil, on Monday, May 15. Masked men attacked bars, banks and police stations with machine guns, gangs set buses on fire and inmates at dozens of prisons took guards hostage in an unprecedented four-day wave of violence around Sao Paulo that left more than 80 dead by Monday.


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Sao Paulo violence calms
May 16, 2006. 02:45 PM
ALEXANDER RAGIR
ASSOCIATED PRESS


SAO PAULO, Brazil - The unprecedented crime wave that killed at least 97 people and terrified the 18 million residents of South America's largest city seemed to be waning Tuesday as stores reopened and bus service


SAO PAULO, Brazil - The unprecedented crime wave that killed at least 97 people and terrified the 18 million residents of South America's largest city seemed to be waning Tuesday as stores reopened and bus service was fully restored.

Officials found the bodies of 13 inmates after quelling rebellions at dozens of prisons in and around Sao Paolo and retaking control of the lockups, according to Brazilian media. Local reports also said three suspected criminals were shot to death in a Sao Paulo suburb by police after the trio opened fire and hurled a grenade.

The death toll in the rioting, set off by a gang's fury at prison transfers, included 39 officers and prison guards killed since Friday and four civilians caught in the crossfire between police and criminals.

A homemade bomb was set off outside a police station in the city of Tremembe, about 145 kilometres northeast of Sao Paulo, destroying a car but causing no injuries.

Sao Paulo nonetheless appeared to be returning to normal Tuesday morning, a day after it was paralyzed by dozens of bus torchings that prompted businesses to close. Overall there were only a few reported attacks Monday night and Tuesday compared with 181 in the previous four days.

Bus service, which keeps commerce alive in the city, was fully restored after panicked drivers took Monday off over fears they might be attacked, leaving 2.9 million people scrambling to find a way to work.

Stores that were shuttered before dark Monday had reopened. But traffic was light, with many people apparently avoiding work and keeping their children at home.

Through the night, heavily armed police stood guard around the sprawling city as authorities announced a tight clampdown on the gangs that launched the attacks on police stations, bars and banks.

"We're at war with them, there will be more casualties, but we won't back down," state military police chief Col. Elizeu Teixeira Borges said.

Near hastily shuttered businesses in a blue-collar neighbourhood, a dozen officers with shotguns and pistols said they did not fear gang attacks that already killed dozens of their comrades.

"We'll be here waiting," said a grim Officer Edvan Oliveira, his finger resting on the trigger of his shotgun. "We want them to come."

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered to send 4,000 elite troops to restore order, but Sao Paulo state Gov. Claudio Lembo said Monday the help wasn't needed even as the chaos prompted the stock market to cancel late trading.

By late Monday night, all 73 prison rebellions had been quelled. The tally of dead in overnight violence from Sunday to Monday was almost exclusively suspected gang members killed in shootouts with police.

The violence was triggered Thursday by an attempt to isolate leaders of the First Capital Command gang which controls drug trafficking and many of Sao Paulo's teeming, notoriously corrupt prisons by transferring eight of them to a high-security facility in a remote part of Sao Paulo state. Leaders of the gang, known as the PCC, reportedly used cellphones the next day to order the attacks.

Officials were worried the violence could spread to Rio de Janeiro, where 40,000 police were put on high alert and extra patrols were dispatched to slums where drug gang leaders live. There were also sporadic reports of violence in other cities in Sao Paulo state, including the killing of a prison guard hit by 20 shots, Globo TV reported.

Police in Sao Paulo said at least 91 people had been arrested since Friday night, when gang members began riddling police cars with bullets, hurling grenades at police stations and attacking officers in their homes and afterwork hangouts.

In the bus attacks, gunmen ordered passengers and drivers off and torched the vehicles. There was no mention of injuries in the dozens of bus burnings.

The PCC was founded in 1993 in Sao Paulo's Taubate Penitentiary and became involved in drug and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies and extortion.

It staged a massive prison uprising in 2001 in which 19 inmates died, and attacked more than 50 police stations in November 2003. Three officers and two suspected gang members were killed and 12 people injured in those attacks.



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