Brazil police investigating suspected bomb threat in Brasilia

Brasilia has grown increasingly tense after Lula beat far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the country's most fraught election in a generation. On Dec. 24, Brasilia police said they foiled a bomb plot, arresting a man with ties to an encampment of pro-Bolsonaro election-deniers camped outside the army headquarters, urging the military to overturn Lula's victory.

Police in Brazil's capital, Brasilia, are investigating a suspected bomb threat in the city's hotel section, close to where President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is staying before his Jan. 1 inauguration, the federal district's security department said on Tuesday.

A Reuters witness said sirens and helicopters could be heard from the hotel where Lula is staying. Brasilia's military police said a backpack had been found and the bomb squad had been called out of precaution. Brasilia has grown increasingly tense after Lula beat far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the country's most fraught election in a generation.

On Dec. 24, Brasilia police said they foiled a bomb plot, arresting a man with ties to an encampment of pro-Bolsonaro election-deniers camped outside the army headquarters, urging the military to overturn Lula's victory. George Washington Sousa, who confessed to making the device and plotting with other camp-dwellers to explode it, said he hoped that bomb would "provoke a military intervention ... to prevent the installation of communism in Brazil."

Earlier in December, a group from the army encampment tried to invade the federal police HQ after the arrest of a pro-Bolsonaro indigenous leader for alleged anti-democratic threats.