Breakthrough for Rio in battle for its slums

Police searched homes and secured the perimeter of a Rio de Janeiro slum yesterday that has long been a stronghold for drug gangs and a symbol of their ability to rule vast areas of the seaside city with impunity.

About 80 federal police officers joined state police in door-to-door searches in the Vila Cruzeiro favela as 800 specially trained troops stood ready in their headquarters, 12 miles away, to back them up.

The area had been taken by law enforcement just hours before, during a five-hour operation using armoured cars and assault rifles.

Armoured personnel carriers were deployed after the gangs shot out tyres or set up burning barricades to prevent police patrol vehicles coming in.

Officials hailed the success of the operation as the birth of a new Rio.

"If I am here telling you this area will be pacified, it's a sign things have changed," Roberto Sa, deputy public-safety secretary for Rio state, said. "But we don't get resources by snapping our fingers. We can't do magic. The challenge is still significant, but we have a goal, and we're not giving back a single millimetre."

Slum residents, streaming out down steep, narrow alleys to jobs in the city below, had mixed reactions to the police. Some ran away, and others welcomed them, offering their identification papers.

Marcilio Alves, treasurer of the residents association of Chatuba, one of the slums in the nearby Alemao sprawl of shantytowns, said the community remained without electricity, as utility workers were afraid of going up the hillside to repair wiring damaged during the operation. Residents were also nervous, because the police could be forced back, leaving them open to retaliation as collaborators.

"The police are saying they're going to bring order to the place, but who knows what will really happen," he said. "The traffickers, they're like a fever in a city that's sick: they go away but they come back."

More than 80 abandoned motorcycles and at least one body were found during the search early yesterday, reminders of the gangsters' quick retreat the day before to the Alemao complex - among the best-defended gang turf in the city.

About 192 people have been arrested or detained since the start of widespread violence on Sunday, said a police spokesman. More than 96 buses and cars have been burned on major roadways, many motorists have been robbed and police outposts have been shot at in the city that will host the final of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

A military spokesman said many of the troops used had served in Haiti. Two other battalions of 800 troops each could be deployed as needed over the next few days.

Brazil is trying to clean up Rio before the World Cup and Olympics.Over the past two years, authorities have established permanent police posts in 13 slums in a bid to control drug-fuelled gangsterism.

"We took from these people what has never before been taken - their territory, their safe harbour," Rio state public safety director Jose Beltrame said. "It's important to arrest them, but it's more important to take their territory."

The city's Olympic committee is confident the pacification project will achieve its goals, the president of the Rio 2016 committee, Carlos Arthur Nuzman, said in a statement.