Vehicles of the Rio de Janeiro's Military Police are parked outside the Getulio Vargas hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Wednesday. AFP

The Rio raid brought the death toll from six days of police crackdowns on drug gangs in Brazil to at least 42, including 14 in Sao Paulo state and 19 in the northeastern state of Bahia.

Rio state police said officers had returned fire after coming under attack during a raid on a meeting by organised crime bosses in the Complexo da Penha group of favelas, on the city's north side.

The deaths come amid mounting calls for independent investigations of alleged police abuses in Brazil, where the security forces have faced accusations of human-rights violations in their war with heavily armed drug gangs.

Rio state police said the operation came after officers received intelligence on a high-level meeting by gang leaders.

"A clash occurred when police teams came under attack by gunmen at the scene," they said in a statement.

"Eleven suspects were wounded" and taken to the hospital, it said.

"Nine of them died of their injuries."

A policeman was also wounded and is in stable condition, it added.

Rio state legislator Dani Monteiro noted the operation came just over a year after a May 2022 raid in a nearby favela that left 23 dead, the second-deadliest police operation in the city's history.

Calling that raid a "massacre," she criticized Rio state Governor Claudio Castro, a security hardliner and ally of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

"Castro's (in)security policy must stop!" Monteiro, a lawmaker for the left-wing PSOL party, wrote on X, formerly called Twitter.

AFP reporters outside the hospital where the wounded were taken described scenes of anxious residents waiting for news on injured relatives, amid a heavy police contingent and helicopters hovering overhead.

Agence France-Presse