Suspected gang members exchanged gunfire with police, hurled Molotov cocktails at banks and burned buses for a second night in a row, but South America's biggest city largely avoided the violence with criminals rampaging in cities far from Sao Paulo.

There were at least 100 attacks against government institutions and businesses late Monday and early Tuesday, a day after the First Capital Command gang allegedly torched buses and banks, sprayed police stations with gunfire and set off bombs throughout the metropolis of 18 million, Sao Paulo's public safety department said.

Police on stepped up patrols shot four suspected criminals dead, raising the death toll to six since the violence began.

The public safety department could not immediately provide details on how the deaths occurred and was still compiling an overall breakdown on the latest outbreak across Brazil's most populous state.

Brazilian media reported that banks, police stations and other government buildings were targeted and buses were burned in at least eight cities, most hundreds of kilometers from the city.

The latest crime spree allegedly initiated by the gang, known here as the PCC, marks the third time in four months that it has unleashed its fury on the streets to oppose the prison transfer of its leaders to more secure lockups.

Anchored in local prisons and led by hardened criminals who issue their orders via cell phones and instructions given to their attorneys, the PCC is one of Brazil's most notorious organized crime groups.

In the initial attacks on Monday, 78 symbols of government and businesses across Sao Paulo state many in the city itself were attacked in the pre-dawn hours, said state police commander, Colonel Elizeu Eclair Teixeira Borges.

Assailants used machine guns, rifles, Molotov cocktails and "other explosive devices" in hit-and-run attacks, avoiding direct confrontation with police.

Police killed two suspects after they allegedly opened fire on a gas station, torched a bus and tried to flee in a car as officers chased them, Borges said. Twelve suspects were taken into custody. One security guard was injured in a bank attack, and four bystanders were hurt by glass after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a business, Borges said.

In one of the most prominent attacks, a large explosion damaged the main entrance to the state justice ministry building, destroying computers and blowing out windows of neighboring buildings.

Bullets were fired through windows of a nearby state finance ministry building. The suspected PCC members also targeted 32 bank branches, Borges said.

Borges said the number of patrol cars circulating in Sao Paulo at night was tripled and the number of police officers was doubled.

Sao Paulo State Governor Claudio Lembo said the justice ministry building may have been targeted because some prisoners believed they would be refused permission to leave prison next Sunday Father's Day in Brazil for visits home before being required to return to their lockups.

During the May outbreak of violence, the PCC launched unprecedented attacks on Sao Paulo's streets and inside prisons that prompted a week of violence. The gang initially targeted police officers shooting them on the streets, at stations and in their homes leaving 41 dead.

Nearly 200 people in all were killed, among them prison guards, suspected criminals, jail inmates and bystanders. Another 100 attacks on July 11-15 left at least six people dead.

The attacks came after gang leaders enraged at the May transfers of 700 of their members to more secure prisons allegedly used smuggled cell phones to order their "soldiers" on the streets to attack.

(China Daily August 9, 2006)