By Pedro Fonseca

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 28 (Reuters) - Scattered gunfire echoed in a Rio de Janeiro slum on Thursday as security forces conducted searches a day after the biggest and bloodiest police assault on drug traffickers in the city for more than a year.

Schools were closed in the Alemao favela, where police killed at least 13 suspected gangsters on Wednesday, but many shops were open.

"Today it's quieter, but you never know. I'm going to the market and maybe I won't be able to get back home if some shoot-out starts," said a woman named Luciana, 37, accompanied by her two sons aged 5 and 7.

Police in helmets and flak jackets guarded entrances to the favela, carrying out random searches on people and vehicles.

Officials said police might stage more raids to root out the drug gangs that operate from the warren-like complex.

About 1,350 police and troopers from a special security force raided the favela on Wednesday to make arrests and seize arms and drugs. But instead of the surgical strike promised by Rio's police chief, a five-hour clash erupted between police and gangsters armed with machine guns and grenades.

Police killed 13 people in the shootouts, while six bystanders were wounded by stray bullets. Six corpses were found in an abandoned car overnight.

The violence reinforced concerns about public safety during the Pan American Games that start on July 13.

Rio, the sixth-largest city in the Americas, will host 5,500 athletes and about 800,000 tourists. It is also a venue for the global series of Live Earth rock concerts on July 7.

Officials hope the events will showcase the oceanside city's fabled charms instead of exposing its rampant crime.

Many of the favelas are controlled by drug gangs who sell cocaine and marijuana to Rio residents, and police usually enter them only in military-style invasions.

VIOLENCE SURGES BEFORE GAMES

The state government played down links between the operation and the Pan American Games.

But Luiciana Garcia, a coordinator with the Global Justice rights group, said: "We've seen police violence intensify a lot in poor communities in the run-up to the Games."

Police have surrounded the slum, home to 100,000 people, since May 2 and before the Wednesday assault about 30 people had been killed in sporadic shootings.

Rights groups criticized the raid and said violent police action in the favelas only fueled more crime.

"A radical policy change is needed or the situation will get totally out of control," said Paulo Mesquita of the Human Rights Watch group.

"They say they are worried about Rio's image, but this massacre is what really affects the image," he said.

Rio has one of the highest murder rates in the world. At least 1,800 people were killed in the first four months of 2007 in the metropolitan area, most of them poor slum-dwellers.

A warden at a children's recreation center, which was shut after no-one showed up on Thursday morning, said living in the violence-ridden slum was almost unbearable.

"Everybody wants to move out of here. I want to go back to my home town," he said.

(Additional reporting by Andrei Khalip)

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