Death toll rises as gang violence rocks Sao Paulo

A Brazilian girl runs past buses burned during three days of gang attacks in Sao Paulo. Photograph: Victor R Caivano/AP

Urgent attempts to quell violence in Sao Paulo that has claimed more than 150 lives since May were under way yesterday after three days of attacks in Brazil's largest city.

The country's justice minister, Marcio Thomaz Bastos, travelled to Sao Paulo to discuss emergency measures with the state government, which has so far rejected offers of federal invention.

Branded "Brazil's 12/7" by one newspaper, the attacks are believed to be the work of the First Command of the Capital, or PCC, crime gang. The city's security secretariat said there had been at least 118 attacks this week causing at least nine deaths. Prison guards and police officers were among those killed. Some 65 buses were set alight as suspected gang members took to the streets armed with petrol bombs and submachine guns. Many parts of the city were brought to a standstill after bus companies closed up shop.

Brazil's media have been almost unanimous in labelling the attacks "terrorist actions", while one paper compared the chaos to the Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon. The presidential candidate Cristovam Buarque said Brazil was in the midst of a civil war.⊃

Ivan Raymondi Barbosa, head of the New Order NGO Ñ allegedly the political wing of the PCC Ñ suggested the attacks were intended to highlight inhumane conditions in the city's overcrowded jails. "This was a reprisal against torture in the prisons," he told one newspaper.

Inaja Santos de Almeida, 50, whose house was burnt out after youths petrol-bombed a bus, was less understanding: "Sure we've seen it happening on the television, but we never thought it would happen here," he said, trampling through a carpet of ashes outside the home he shared with his elderly parents. "These scum would kill their own relatives if they had to."⊃

Gilberto Dimenstein, a prominent journalist who specialises in education and human rights, blamed gang violence on Sao Paulo's failing public education system. "For many of these youths the path to organised crime É is virtually a straight line," he wrote in yesterday's Folha de Sao Paulo paper.

Outside Mr Almeida's charred two-storey home was a case in point. As neighbours helped remove strips of burnt wood from his house a group of barefoot children played in the detritus. "One shot in the head," one chanted cheerily. "You're going to get one shot in the head."

Today's best video

Today in pictures