Brazil senator shot amid police strike

Reuters
·1 min read

BRASILIA, Feb 19 (Reuters) - A left-wing Brazilian senator was shot and wounded on Wednesday while he was trying to intervene in a strike called by military police in the northeastern state of Ceara, according to a Twitter post on his official account.

Cid Gomes, a former governor of the state, was taken to hospital, according to the post. Social media videos showed him on an excavator trying to stop the strike.

Police violence in Brazil is one of the deadliest in the world, although attention has been paid mostly to killings in states such as Rio de Janeiro.

Gomes is the brother of Ciro Gomes, also a prominent politician and former left-wing presidential candidate.

Ciro Gomes posted on Twitter that his brother had been shot twice by military police wearing face masks, but added that the bullets had not hit any vital organs. (Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello; Editing by Sandra Maler)