SAO PAULO, Brazil — A four-day spree of violence in Brazil's financial capital has killed more than 80 people, including 39 law enforcement officers, victims of an underworld run by inmates able to use cellphones to order killings, drug deals and violent unrest in prison and on city streets.
Authorities called the attacks an unprecedented assault against public security in Latin America's largest nation. Sao Paulo's chief public prosecutor, Janice Ascari, labeled them the first terrorist attacks on Brazilian soil.
At least 180 acts of violence against police and fire stations, public buses, banks and other targets have been reported since the disturbances erupted Friday. Uprisings were reported at 80 prisons.
As of late Monday, officials confirmed 81 dead and 49 wounded and said 91 suspects had been apprehended. Law enforcement officials promised swift action to restore order in the world's third-largest city, with a population of 20 million.
"We are not going to give in to organized crime," Sao Paulo Gov. Claudio Lembo told reporters.
Bloody jail uprisings are common in Brazil, but the current spate of violence looks more like a guerrilla offensive with multiple fronts in a war between the state and a powerful prison-based gang. The weekend death toll in Sao Paulo exceeded that in Baghdad.
"It's a direct attack against the state, against public order," said Elisabete Albernaz, a specialist in public safety at Viva Rio, a research institute in Rio de Janeiro.
"This is a show of power, using terror and panic to destabilize the normal order."
On a day when Brazil's World Cup soccer squad was unveiled, talk of the violence trumped sports chat around the country -- a rarity in the soccer-crazed nation.
Instead of sports, fear gripped this normally pulsating city, where 3 million commuters were stranded or delayed after gang members boarded dozens of buses, ordered passengers out and torched the vehicles. Many schools and shops were closed, and heavily armed police set up roadblocks and guarded police stations throughout the city.
"I'm afraid to take the subway -- it's a very easy target," said Bianca Vaz Mondo, 21, a student at the University of Sao Paulo.
Authorities blame the violence on First Command of the Capital, a prison-based gang known by its Portuguese initials, PCC. The group was apparently angry about the transfer of hundreds of gang members, including its leader, to a remote penitentiary.
