#RIO #NEWS Attacks Continue in Rio with Four Cars Set Ablaze

RIO DE JANEIRO – The attacks by gunmen who have spread panic in Rio de Janeiro since the weekend continued with the burning of four cars around the city and shots fired at a police post, authorities said Tuesday.

The latest attacks increased to nine the number of similar violent incidents since last Saturday and which Rio de Janeiro state authorities describe as reprisals for the blows inflicted by security forces on the drug gangs that control some of the teeming “favelas,” or shantytowns, in Brazil’s second-largest city.

State Gov. Sergio Cabral’s vow to maintain his policy of police occupation of the slums and to intensify the war on drugs failed to intimidate the gunmen, who went on the attack again Monday night.

As in previous incidents, assailants armed with military assault rifles blocked important thoroughfares, pulled people out of passing vehicles and set fire to their cars.

Besides attacks on vehicles, gunmen on motorcycles fired shots at a police post, but without leaving any victims.

Police also said that two people who were in a car in the region known as Baixada Fluminense were gunned down, but the motive of that crime is still unknown or whether it was related to the other attacks.

The most serious attack occurred Sunday, when six men blocked a street, burned two vehicles, stole a third and, while making their escape, fired on a truck carrying several soldiers.

This new outbreak of violence has sown panic in Rio de Janeiro, the city that will host the 2014 soccer World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

To deal with the attacks, state police announced Monday an increase in the number of officers patrolling the streets, the delivery of 250 new motorcycles to get cops more quickly to where they are needed, and the stepping up of operations in shantytowns occupied by drug gangs. EFE

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