(This item supplements "FEATURE-Brazil pays for inequality with violence" [ID:nN04354890]) April 16 (Reuters) - Waves of violent crime in Brazil over the past two years have caused a public outcry and drawn international attention. Brazil ranks fourth among the world's most violent countries. Each year an estimated 45,000 people are killed. Here are some high-profile recent incidents. MARCH 2007 - Twelve Rio de Janeiro police officers are killed in eight days by gunmen from drug gangs - - - - FEBRUARY 2007 - Joao Helio, a 6-year-old Rio boy caught in a seatbelt, gets dragged for miles under a car by fleeing robbers during a car-jacking. His death galvanized a public outcry for more security. - - - - DECEMBER 2006 - Seven passengers are burned alive on a Rio bus attacked by drug gangs retaliating against vigilante groups operated by policemen. About two dozen people are killed in attacks on police posts and other sites in Rio in the run-up to New Year. - - - - MAY 2006 - An organized crime gang called the First Command of the Capital (PCC) hits at banks, police posts and government buildings. About 200 people are killed including police and gangsters and the city comes to a halt for two days. - - - - MARCH 2005 - A death squad kills 29 people, including many teenagers, during the night in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, the city's worst single massacre. Only one of the 7 suspected assassins -- all of them police officers -- was convicted. - - - - FEBRUARY 2005 - Sister Dorothy Stang, a U.S. nun, is killed by gunmen hired by ranchers on a jungle track near Altamira in the Amazon rain forest for her defense of landless peasants and the environment. (Compiled by Raymond Colitt)
