NEW YORK: The United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHR) has called for an independent, thorough and impartial investigation into a major police operation in an Afro-Brazilian neighbourhood, known as favelas in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, in which at least 25 including a police officer were reportedly killed.

The operation deadliest such operation in more than a decade in Rio de Janeiro started in the early hours of Thursday (6 May) when, in an operation allegedly aimed at members of a criminal organization involved in arms and drugs trafficking, police officers on the ground and in a helicopter overhead opened fire into the neighbourhood of Jacarezinho, one of the city's largest slums.

According to local news agencies, a contingent of over 200 heavily armed police officers descended on the crowded, poor and mostly non-white community which is largely controlled by one of the country's leading criminal gangs, Comando Vermelho, or Red Command. 

Witnesses have described the operation as a terrifying firefight, with suspects leaping from rooftops of the crowded houses in the locality. There was a heavy exchange of fire from both sides in which one police officer was also killed along with 24 suspected criminals. 

The city police chief Ronaldo Oliveira said that the casualties in the raid was one of the largest death tolls in a police operation in Rio, surpassing 19 at Complexo do Alemao slum in 2007, "Except we did not lose one of ours then," he said.

The UNHR spokesperson Rupert Colville has said that the agency was deeply disturbed by the incident and called upon the Office of the Prosecutor to conduct an independent, thorough and impartial investigation into this incident in accordance with international standards.