AFP: At least 26 people were killed in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area over the past three days amid worsening violence that appears to be targeting state military police officers, local press reports said today. 

Overnight, four people, including a prison guard and a 10-year-old girl, were reportedly gunned down and 11 others wounded in Brazil's most populous city and nearby towns.         

During the night of Saturday to Sunday, a 44-year-old female military officer died after being shot in the back 10 times in front of her 11-year-old daughter as she stepped out of her car, a spokeswoman for the state public security secretariat said. The victim was one of around 100 officers, including 90 military police, killed in the state since the beginning of the year. Forty-one of the officers were executed by gunmen, the source added.  

Many of the police killings have been followed by the shooting deaths of suspected drug traffickers or robbers, which families of the victims claim, without proof, were retaliation by military police. 

The violence in this metropolitan area of 20 million people has been linked in press reports to an alleged undeclared war between the military police and a prison drug-trafficking gang known as PCC (First Command of the Capital).