18 dead in Brazil during a police operation in a Rio favela

Another police raid, another massacre. Rio de Janeiro experiences 10 hours of furious battle between over 400 agents of the elite intervention corps (Core and Bope) and the militiamen barricaded in the Complexo do Alemão, a large favela east of the Rio de Janeiro capital. There are 18 deaths and according to the organizations that follow the violence in Brazil it is the fourth massacre by number of victims in the modern history of the country and the third in Rio alone.