RIO DE JANEIRO: Thousands of Brazilian army troops raided Rio de Janeiro slums in a pre-dawn crackdown on crime gangs on Saturday, leaving parts of the city looking like a war zone on the first anniversary of the opening of the Olympic Games.

Five areas were targeted by police and 3,600 troops in a swoop starting at 4am, the Rio state security service said in a statement. Their main goal was to stop gangs behind a surge in brazen robberies of commercial trucks, with arrest warrants issued for 40 people. Rio state authorities say there were 10,000 cases of cargo theft last year.

However, the unusually aggressive operation also follows wider concerns that nearly bankrupt post-Olympic Rio is spinning out of control. The troops in action were part of 8,500 deployed to the city last month in a tacit acknowledgement that cash-strapped police have lost the ability to cope.

Scores of heavily armed soldiers in camouflage, rows of jeeps and armoured personnel carriers could be seen ringing Lins favela, one of the many little-regulated, and often gang-plagued communities of working class Brazilians that rise on the city’s forest-clad hills.

Troops stood guard with fingers on the triggers of assault rifles, while units of soldiers and SWAT police roamed the streets, pointing their weapons out of car windows.

Everyone entering and leaving the area was subjected to an identity check and search, with men required to lift their shirts. One man was questioned at length about a scar on his stomach and another man’s bag was searched only to find he was carrying a large Bible.

Residents said they had woken to shooting when the troops moved in and that the operation made them feel no safer.p“There’s an atmosphere of tension and fear,” said Vanuza Barroso da Silva, 23, who was going to her job at a supermarket. “People can hardly get to work.” “They treat us as if we’re trash,” her father Roberto, 46, said angrily of the security forces.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2017