Police outside the InterContinental Hotel in Rio de Janeiro during a shoot-out between police and drugs traffickers.
A band of gun-wielding men invaded a luxury hotel in Rio de Janeiro early Saturday and took 35 people hostage, before the police negotiated their freedom and the gunmen's surrender, officials said.
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The more than three-hour siege at the Intercontinental Hotel in the upscale São Conrado neighborhood followed an intense gunfight early Saturday between the police and as many as 35 heavily armed men from the nearby Rocinha slum, said Dirceu Silviana, a spokesman for Rio State's security secretary. The slum, one of the city's largest, is along the corridor to Barra da Tijuca, where more than half of the events for the 2016 Olympic Games are scheduled to be held.
One woman, identified by the police as Adriana Duarte de Oliveira dos Santos, 41, was killed in the gunfight, and four police officers were wounded. The police said that Ms. Santos was part of the hierarchy of the drug gang that dominates Rocinha.
Mr. Silviana said that the gunmen were leaving a party in a neighboring slum, some waving their guns, when they encountered police officers early Saturday.
The gunmen scattered, with some entering apartment buildings. Ten men went into the Intercontinental Hotel around 8:30 a.m., Mr. Silviana said. They seized 5 guests from Europe and about 30 hotel workers in the lobby at gunpoint, and forced them to a kitchen a floor below, according to a hotel spokesman, Roberto Falcão. Police officers from the city's Elite Squad persuaded the gunmen to surrender and release the hostages, unharmed, around midday.
Many of the 800 guests were at the hotel for a dental surgery conference or Sunday's Rio Marathon.
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SOURCE: The New York Times
