Relatives claim dead as calm returns to Sao Paulo

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Weeping relatives today collected the corpses of suspected gangsters shot by police in a week of violence in Brazil's business capital as calls grew for an investigation into the bloodshed.

The official death toll stood at 152 today. That included 107 suspected gangsters, most of them killed in police sweeps through poor districts after the brunt of gangster attacks launched a week ago across the city and state.

State military police commander Col Elizeu Eclair assured Sao Paulo residents the situation had returned to normal as the city passed its first quiet night on Thursday.

"I say to our people, the police are still in the streets, they can go out and have fun this weekend," he said.

Brazil's most powerful criminal gang, the First Command of the Capital, killed about 30 policeman in attacks on police posts, vehicles and off-duty officers. The offensive was launched in retaliation for the transfer of jailed gang leaders and members to a remote high-security prison.

Dozens of buses were set ablaze, spreading panic and chaos through Sao Paulo, the world's third largest metropolis with a population of 20 million.

The corpses of more than 100 suspected gangsters shot by police were taken to the police forensic laboratory, where relatives waited to pick them up. Early this morning, only 21 remained, 17 of them unidentified.

Chief Forensic Officer Celso Perioli said the morgue had run out of fridges. "We've never seen anything like this. If we didn't have the burials, they would have rotted," he told reporters.

Eclair and other officials denied that police carried out a executions to avenge the deaths of their colleagues, but calls grew within Brazil and from international organisations for an investigation into all the killings.

"Heinous attacks on police and civilians cannot justify summary executions by police," said Paulo Mesquita, Brazil researcher for the Washington-based Human Rights Watch.

Brazilian newspapers have described the police response as "massacres" and reported that visits to mortuaries showed many of the victims were shot in the head.

"It's still too early to say for sure if the use of force was exaggerated but given the history of our police, it would not be a surprise if innocent people were also brutally assassinated," said Carlos Cardoso, a human rights advisor in the Sao Paulo state government.

Violent crime is fact of life in Brazilian cities. But the gangster attacks in Sao Paulo, the financial and industrial powerhouse of Latin America's largest country, were the worst in its history.

They highlighted the power and organisation of big criminal gangs -- which are engaged in drug trafficking, kidnapping and armed robberies -- and exposed the weakness of Brazil's judicial system and security structure.

Congress is working on a package of reforms for stricter regulations in Brazil's notorious prisons, where gang bosses often run outside operations using smuggled cell phones. Phone companies today blocked signals in areas near prisons.

Sao Paulo state Gov Claudio Lembo said the violence should serve as a warning to the wealthier classes that Brazil's deep social inequalities were tearing it apart.

But with a presidential election due in October, politicians from rival parties are busy blaming each other's failed policies for the explosion of the past week.

- REUTERS