Nine people died in four separate shootouts between police and drug traffickers in poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods

Nine people died in four separate shootouts between police and drug traffickers in poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods, Brazilian police said.The bloodiest incident occurred Wednesday afternoon when military police tried to enter the Aço “favela,” or shantytown, in the city’s western section to look for some drug traffickers.
Five people, all of them members of an armed group, died in the shootout, police said, adding that two rifles, two pistols and a shotgun were seized in the operation.
A few hours earlier, police killed two suspects armed with pistols in Salgueiro, a shantytown in Rio’s northern district, near the famous Maracana Stadium.The drug traffickers who control the shantytown fired at a police helicopter that was providing support for the operation but missed the aircraft.Police conducting two other anti-drug operations in shantytowns in Rio’s northern section and in Duque de Caxias, a city in the metropolitan area, killed two people in shootouts.
During the first 11 months of 2008, according to official figures, 1,066 people died in police operations in Rio de Janeiro state.The violent methods used by the state’s police forces have been criticized by the United Nations and Amnesty International, but Rio de Janeiro Gov. Sergio Cabral backs the approach taken by the security forces in dealing with drug traffickers.Cabral, who took office in 2007, called for taking on the gangs.A third of Rio’s 6 million people live in dwellings in the shantytowns, where drug traffickers often wield power through violence, replacing the government.In some 200 shantytowns, according to official estimates, drug traffickers have been pushed out by death squads made up of active and retired police officers, who take justice into their own hands, creating a new challenge for the government.Rio de Janeiro is plagued by constant clashes involving organized crime groups, the security forces and paramilitaries over control of the city’s favelas.In late 2006, drug gangs in Rio launched coordinated pre-dawn attacks on buses and police stations they said were in retaliation for death squad operations in scores of slums.Leaflets strewn at the scenes of the attacks, which left more than a score dead, accused former Rio Gov. Rosinha Garotinho of fostering the formation of the death squads.In one of most heinous incidents, six people were burned to death when gunmen boarded a bus, robbed the passengers and then set fire to the vehicle.Two years ago, shortly before the Pan American Games started, Rio was the scene of clashes among police, militias and drug traffickers that left 20 people dead in just one day.