Rio police take gang stronghold in massive push

At least 350 officers from Rio's elite police unit and regular policemen were ferried to the top of the Vila Cruzeiro slum in armoured vehicles on loan from the nation's navy.

Authorities however didn't say if police would immediately push into those slums, but said federal police would later join the operation to help hold territory taken from the gangs.

By mid-afternoon, live aerial television footage showed dozens of heavily-armed gang-members fleeing from the slum into a jungle area and then calmly walking into the nearby Alemao complex of more than a dozen shantytowns.

Police have long described Alemao as one of the two strongest areas currently targeted in a two-year-old aggressive policing program that has seen officers enter 13 slums and push out drug gangs that had previous enjoyed a decades-long iron grip over the areas.

Security officials declined to say if they would enter Alemao on Friday — or if they would hold off invading the area to sometime later within the next six months, as had earlier been planned.

Raids on gangs this week came in response to widespread violence that the criminals allegedly have inflicted since Sunday. More than 40 buses and cars have been burned on major roadways, motorists robbed en masse and police outposts shot up in the city that will host the final match of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

At least 23 people have been killed in the clashes, most of them suspected drug gang members. Since late Sunday, authorities have arrested more than 150 people in raids on nearly 30 shantytowns in the northern and western parts of Rio.

Officials said the push into the Vila Cruzeiro shantytown killed at least eight people and left one police officer wounded. Police said they arrested 11 men, seizing stockpiles of gasoline and dynamite.