Shots were fired at police in the early hours of this morning as they tried to break up parties ongoing in the Amadora neighbourhood of Cova da Moura.
No-one was hurt, nor have police been able to identify where the shots came from.
Explain reports, hundreds of people were found partying in Cova da Moura. It wasn’t a question of one party, rather multiple gatherings.
Cova da Moura is known as a ‘difficult neighbourhood’. It appeared in a BBC documentary six years ago over the issues locals had with police (click here), and has been the scene of various incidents in the intervening years (click here).
This weekend, the partying simply got out of hand. Chairs and tables were set up in the streets, making circulation of vehicles impossible, and in the end the noise and sheer numbers of people involved resulted in complaints to the PSP.
An initial patrol ‘assessed’ the situation at around two o’clock this morning, writes Jornal de Notícias, with agents returning to their base “to prepare an operation involving more than 30 police from different squads, namely ‘rapid intervention units’ and those for criminal investigation.
These teams returned to Cova da Moura and ‘spread out’ – the idea being to bring an end to the gatherings ongoing.
Around 15 agents concentrated on Rua São Nicolau, explains JN, and by 2.30am they were ‘dispersing people’ when “one of the men present pulled out a fire arm and shot four times in the direction of the police.
“He didn’t hit any of them, but the shots led police to seek refuge”, says JN. “In the middle of the confusion, the author of the gunshots as well as those accompanying him managed to escape…”
Efforts were made afterwards to locate the individual “but no one was arrested”, a police source has confirmed.
Lusa has a slightly different story. It puts the number of revellers at ‘around 100’, not hundreds – and suggests ‘police shot back’ “in the sense of protecting the rest of the population and the police themselves, and to guarantee public order”.
Because guns were involved, the incident has now passed to PJ judicial police for investigation.
