Police shot dead at least 18 assailants early on Wednesday, media reported, in the latest clashes in a five-day explosion of gang violence in São Paulo that has claimed about 150 lives.
South America’s biggest city has been gripped by fear since a powerful gang launched attacks on police stations, banks and buses, as well as prison uprisings.
Early on Wednesday, presumed gang members assaulted police stations and patrol cars in six different districts of the sprawling São Paulo metropolis, which has a population of 20-million, local media reported.
Local authorities did not immediately confirm the attacks.
Police Commander Elizeu Teixera Borges said on Tuesday that ”the police is killing anyone who dares to clash with us”.
Nearly all the violence has been blamed on First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials, PCC, the largest criminal gang in São Paulo state. It has a massive base in prisons.
Before Wednesday’s attacks, authorities said in their latest toll that 133 people had been killed in the unrest.
The PCC launched the attacks on Friday in retaliation for the transfer of hundreds of its members, including its presumed leader, Marcos Cacho, known as ”Marcola”, to maximum-security prisons.
Police said gang leaders used cellphones from inside the prisons to direct the unrest.
Order was restored in 73 prisons hit by gang-launched uprisings on Monday, after prison officials negotiated the release of 195 hostages.
Local media reported that the jailed PCC leader had met government officials in prison to reach a negotiated settlement, but state Governor Claudio Lembo has denied any talks had taken place.
The head of the prison system, Nagashi Furukawa, told reporters on Tuesday that he had allowed a lawyer to visit Marcola on Sunday and report that the gang leader had not been harmed.
In return, the criminals on the street ”sought to stop what they were doing”, he said.
The PCC first emerged in prisons in the 1990s and was responsible for uprisings in 20 penitentiaries in February 2001. In November 2003, it launched attacks on security forces that left 11 officers and seven gang members dead. — Sapa-AFP