April 2, 2005, 12:40AM
Police believed behind massacre in Brazil
30 are killed in two attacks in suburbs of Rio
By MICHAEL ASTOR
Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - At least 30 people were killed in drive-by shootings in two gritty, working-class suburbs late Thursday night and early Friday, in what the local authorities described as perhaps the worst bloodbath in the history of this often violent city.
At a news conference here on Friday, the secretary of public security for the state of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Itagiba, strongly hinted that the gunmen were military police officers angered by a recent campaign to crack down on police violence and corruption. Arrests of rogue officers may have incited others "who do not know how to use uniforms and badges" to take reprisals against the civilian population they are supposed to defend, he said.
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Witnesses said the victims, who included a 7-year-old and some teenagers, were mowed down by four men in a white car. Some of the dead were shot as they stood outside a carwash while others were killed in front of a bar, at a plaza called Bible Square, running toward a highway for safety, or as they were simply walking down the street on an unseasonably warm autumn night.
Earlier this week, two men in the same area, one a convicted drug dealer, were abducted from a bar and killed, with the head of one of them then being thrown over a wall into a police station. According to local news accounts, surveillance cameras showed eight men, seven in police uniforms, driving up to the station and dumping the bodies. Eight military police officers were arrested on Wednesday.
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