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Brazilian gang rages fourth day
In Sao Paulo, buses burn, stores close early and parents keep kids home. The violence has killed more than 80 people.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 16, 2006
SAO PAULO, Brazil - 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 a four-day wave of violence around South America's largest city that left more than 80 dead by Monday. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva prepared to send in 4,000 federal troops, and officials worried the violence could spread 220 miles northeast to Rio de Janeiro, where extra police patrols were dispatched to slums where drug gang leaders live. "What happened in Sao Paulo was a provocation, a show of force by organized crime," Silva said. The violence was triggered by an attempt to isolate gang leaders, who control many of Sao Paulo's teeming, corrupt prisons, by transferring eight of them Thursday to a high-security facility hundreds of miles away from Sao Paulo and its 18-million people. The leaders of the First Capital Command gang, known by the Portuguese initials PCC, reportedly used cell phones to order the attacks. Gang members began riddling police cars with bullets, hurling grenades at stations and attacking officers at home. Sunday night, the gang employed a new tactic: sending gunmen onto buses, ordering passengers and drivers off, and torching the vehicles. Thousands of drivers refused to work Monday, leaving an estimated 2.9-million people scrambling to find a way to their jobs. While most businesses remained open, almost all shut early, creating one of the city's worst traffic jams. Worried parents kept many children out of schools. Sao Paulo's main stock exchange, the Bovespa, canceled afterhours trading to let investors and workers leave early. There was no mention of injuries in the nearly 50 reports of bus burnings. But 21 new killings were reported by Monday morning, the state government of Sao Paulo said, putting the toll at 81: 39 police officers and prison guards, 38 suspected gang members, and four civilians caught in 181 attacks since Friday.
[Last modified May 16, 2006, 07:18:50]
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