A stray bullet fired in a shootout between police and drug traffickers killed a young football player in Rio de Janeiro on the eve of the opening of the Pan American Games.

Leandro da Silva, 16, was shot in the chest while cooking breakfast at his home in a shanty town before a training session at the Sao Cristovao soccer grounds. Although he was not competing in the Games, the death of an athlete added to concerns in the city that violent clashes between security forces and gangs could spill over into the biggest sporting event in the Americas, which opened last night.

The arrival of 6,000 athletes, officials and journalists in Rio comes as authorities battle gangs in the city’s shanty towns in an effort to retake control of areas abandoned to the control of drug traffickers for decades. Dozens have been left dead in the confrontations, which at one stage led to the city’s international airport being closed because of gunfire. During the games 6,000 members of Brazil’s elite paramilitary National Security Force will be deployed to the city, along with almost 3,000 other federal officers, to work with 15,000 local police.

In defending his decision to order police to retake control of favelasnow, Rio’s new governor Sérgio Cabral said that the state could no longer tolerate leaving more than 600 of the city’s shanty towns outside state control and promised a massive injection of social aid into these communities once authorities have regained control.

But human rights groups say that the police have been heavy-handed in their approach and that several victims of police operations on June 27 in the Alemão complex of shanty towns show signs of summary execution, an all-too-common practice by Brazilian police forces. The police deny the claims but Amnesty International labelled the police actions “discriminatory, violent and ineffective”.

Mr Cabral’s get-tough stance has been backed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva but the federal Government has rejected his calls to put troops on Rio’s streets amid clear indications that the army was unwilling to get involved in combating crime.

Brazil has invested money and effort in staging the Pan American Games in a bid to convince sporting bodies to consider the country for more high-profile events such as the World Cup and Olympics. The country is favourite to host the 2014 World Cup and Rio itself is set to bid for future summer Olympics.

But the hosting of the games has highlighted other problems endemic to Brazil – particularly the inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy. Budgets for the Pan American Games ran out of control amid mismanagement and corruption leaving the price to taxpayers about eight times higher than original estimates. These huge cost overruns have raised concern about the potential for waste and corruption were Brazil to win the far more expensive right to host the 2014 World Cup.

The corrupt cartolas – or “top-hats” – that run Brazilian football have watched how easily the Government was forced into throwing budgets aside when it came to spending on the games. Their critics say they are now making promises about private investment in the country’s creaking football infrastructure in order to help convince FIFA to award the 2014 World Cup to Brazil in the full knowledge that these pledges will never be met and the Government will instead have to step in and meet the funding gap.

While Mr da Silva has openly campaigned for Brazil’s World Cup bid, Lance, the main sports newspaper, says the bid is a confidence trick by football bosses on taxpayers and that the money would be better spent on health and education.

Another problem is the chaos in the air transport network. Several times in the months since a passenger jet crashed following a collision with a private jet last September the network has come under strain with flights cancelled or suffering long delays.

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