23 more killed in Sao Paulo gang attacks

The weekend onslaught by the powerful "First Capital Command", the biggest criminal gang in the southeastern Brazilian state, has left several dozen police officers dead.

The prison-based gang also launched rebellions in more than 50 jails and penitentiaries, taking numerous hostages.

On Sunday Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered Sao Paulo Governor Claudio Lembo federal help to restore order, but Lembo declined the assistance, according to a CBN radio report.

The gang violence was apparently sparked in reaction to the transfer of 765 gang members from their current prisons to higher-security facilities.

Meanwhile, another 33 related prison rebellions also broke out on Sunday, bringing the number of penitentiary revolts across Sao Paulo state to 51 at the peak of the two-day uprising more than one-third of Brazil's 144 prisons. By late Sunday, rebellions continued at 41 prisons, and inmates were holding 229 prison guards hostage.

The inmates have not made any demands nor have they harmed any of their hostages, said Jorge de Souza a spokesman for the Sao Paulo Prison Affairs Department.

He said visiting relatives were inside several of the prisons but "we don't consider them hostages because they are there to show solidarity with their jailed relatives."

Enio Lucciola, spokesman for the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department said the attacks and prison rebellions, planned by the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, "were the most vicious and deadliest attacks on public security forces that have ever taken place in Brazil."

The attacks were in response to the transfer of eight imprisoned PCC leaders, a practice authorities use to sever prisoners' ties to gang members outside prison.

Lucciola said authorities were prepared for some kind of PCC attack after the transfer "but we never imagined it would be so big or ferocious."

Late Sunday evening, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper's Web site reported the death toll had risen to 55 and that at least 10 public buses had been burned by bandits in the city of Sao Paulo. Television images showed the buses engulfed in flames, while Folha Online said passengers were ordered out of the vehicles before bandits set them ablaze.