Reports indicate that the victims were indiscriminately shot by a group of men from a moving car, in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense area.

According to reports, the Rio state Secretary for Public Security has issued a statement affirming the likelihood that military police were involved in carrying out the killings.

Amnesty International said:

"Twelve years on from the brutal killings of sleeping Children's rights by military police in Candlaria and Vigario Geral, little has changed. Police brutality, ‘justified’ by wars against drug gangs, is rife.

"Hundreds of civilians each year get caught in the crossfire between armed drug gangs and over-zealous, under-trained police. Particularly worrying are reports that suggest continued, deliberate police executions.

“Last night’s events show the lengths that ‘Death Squads’ will go to in order to spread terror and resist attempts by the authorities to stop their activities.

"The Rio state authorities must continue in their efforts to bring those responsible for last night’s incidents to justice."

The Secretary for Public Security is also reported to have said that he believes the massacre was carried out as a reprisal for arrests made yesterday of eight military police in the Baixada district.

The men were caught on camera in the act of dumping the bodies of two men in the early hours of the morning outside a local police station.

The decapitated head of one of the men, who witnesses say were abducted from a bar hours previously, was thrown over the wall into the grounds of the police station.

The killings of the two men and last night’s massacre are believed to be a response to a crackdown on ‘Death Squads’ and other criminal activity by military police in the Baixada Fluminense.

This is part of a general drive against corruption and crime in Rio’s police forces, called Operation Razor on the Flesh.

‘Death squads’, often linked to local politicians and private security companies and primarily manned by police or ex-police officers, have been active in Baixada Fluminense since the 1960s.

Background

It is nearly 12 years since Brazil and the world were appalled by the horrific killings of street Children's rights as they lay sleeping outside the Candelária church in central Rio de Janeiro.

Only a few weeks later the senseless murder of twenty-one residents of Vigário Geral, a community on the outskirts of the city, served to establish Rio’s reputation as one of the world’s most violent cities.

The shock was all the greater when evidence emerged that both massacres had been carried out by members of Rio’s Military Police force, the very individuals paid, trained and equipped by the state to protect society from crime and violence.

More about the Candelária and Vigário Geral massacres