Brazil sends National Force to stop violence in Amazon

Sao Paulo, Jun 7 (EFE).- The government of Brazil authorized Monday the dispatch of officers of the National Force, an elite body of the police, to reinforce security in the state of Amazonas, which is experiencing a wave of attacks by criminal groups.

“At the request of the governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima, and aiming to help restore peace and order in the state capital, I have just authorized the use of the National Force in Manaus,” wrote Justice Minister Anderson Torres on Twitter.

He added that operational planning will be defined by the National Secretariat of Public Security, linked to the Justice department.

Lima thanked Torres for accepting his request for “troops and vehicles of the National Force to reinforce our actions to combat crimes that have been happening since the early hours of Sunday.”

Criminals set fire to an outpatient clinic, a union building and an electronic teller machine at dawn, and shot at a police station in the center of the city, where there was an exchange of fire with officers.

As commissioner Marcelo Martins told the G1 website, the suspects arrived at the police station by boat, due to the historic rise of the Negro River, and threw a grenade at the building, but the device did not explode.

Amid the wave of violence, buses did not operate for the second day in a row Monday, after at least 16 vehicles were set on fire early Sunday.

So far, more than 30 people have been arrested for alleged participation in criminal acts, including two of the suspected organizers and an 11-year-old boy, according to the Public Security Secretariat of Amazonas.

The authorities suspect that the acts of violence are in response to the death of a drug trafficker during a police operation carried out last Saturday in Manaus.

It is believed that the order for the attacks could have come from inside a prison where there are leaders of the criminal faction to which the 30-year-old drug trafficker belonged. EFE

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