By Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Police in northeastern Brazil arrested 34 people, including policemen, lawyers and merchants, on Tuesday on charges of participating in death squads believed to have killed hundreds of people.

The groups operated in Recife, capital of Pernambuco state and the most violent of Brazil's crime-ridden cities based on per capita homicides.

"They specialized in exterminating people but they also did some drug trafficking and theft," Joaquim Neto, spokesman for Pernambuco's security secretary, said by telephone.

Brazil has the world's fourth-highest murder rate with about 45,000 people killed each year, following Colombia, Russia and Venezuela, according to the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture.

Violent clashes involving gangs frequently turn entire city neighborhoods into war zones, often killing bystanders and raising rights concerns over police brutality.

The Recife arrests coincide with the visit this week of U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, Philip Alston. He is meeting government officials and rights groups in four cities over allegations of executions and torture by security officials and death squads.

Around 380 police officers with 41 arrest warrants confiscated pistols, rifles and drugs from two separate gangs on Tuesday before dawn.

Police accuse the two groups of having killed 35 people over the past five months but Neto said they most likely had assassinated several hundred victims before that.

One of the groups was led by a former military police officer. Law enforcement officials, who earn as little as 1,200 reais ($700) a month, control part of organized crime in Recife, including kidnappings and bank robberies, former officers have told Reuters.

Hiring gunmen to carry out vigilante justice is a common practice in regions where laws often are not enforced due to understaffed or corrupt police forces.

In April, federal police arrested another group in Pernambuco accused of killing around 200 victims for 1,000 to 5,000 reais ($582 to $2,906) per murder.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched a $3.3 billion plan in August to curb crime with tougher police enforcement and more social welfare policies.

But human rights groups have complained about growing police brutality, especially during a crackdown in Rio de Janeiro last month that killed at least 19 people. A government human rights report said two victims were executed summarily in the back of the head, a claim Rio police deny. (Editing by Angus MacSwan and John O'Callaghan)

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