Hostage taking at Rio’s main bus station, two injured

A man took 17 bus passengers hostage at the main station Rio de Janeiro, after wounding at least two people with a firearm, police reported Tuesday.

The area was cordoned off and agents from the elite Special Operations Battalion unit carried out “negotiations in place”explained the Rio Military Police in a statement.

“A man shot two people and took other passengers hostage on a bus at the Rio Bus Station, in the Santo Cristo neighborhood. The injured were transferred to the Souza Aguiar Municipal Hospital, in the Center.”the police said.

Television footage showed a blue bus stopped in the middle of an empty parking lot.

In total, 17 people are being held, including children and the elderly, Military Police Colonel Marco Andrade explained outside the station.

The objective of the negotiations is that the individual “give yourself”he added. At first it was not clear how the incident occurred, but according to testimony accounts, the man would have shot at the outside of the vehicle and subsequently boarded the bus.

“I was on the catwalk when the individual took out the gun and started shooting,” said a user of the station, Carlos Sarabia, to the Globo channel.

“I have two friends who are on the bus,” he added. ““We are all desperate because we don’t know what is going to happen.”

The TV also showed a heavy police deployment and dozens of people outside the station, located in the center of the city.

The terminal was closed after evacuating all passengers and employees, AFP confirmed. Buses leave from the station to other regions of Brazil, and 38,000 people pass through it daily.

The hijacking of buses has precedents in Rio. In 2019, an individual held bus passengers hostage for almost four hours on the bridge that connects Rio de Janeiro with the neighboring city of Niterói, before finally being shot down by police snipers.

In August 2011, another kidnapping left three injured in the heart of the city. The most serious case was in June 2000, when a hostage was murdered and the attacker died after being captured by the authorities. That event inspired a movie.

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