"We will intensify the operation," she said, adding that the
armed forces could be deployed to finish the job.
She said 300 mining camps had been dismantled, and 20 planes
and one helicopter destroyed by agents of the environmental
protection agency Ibama.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed when he took
office in January to remove the miners, whose presence caused a
humanitarian crisis by spreading disease and causing
malnutrition among the Yanomami by reducing their game and
poisoning rivers.
A large-scale enforcement operation was launched in February
and most miners began to leave or were forced to go.
Federal Police said they were investigating the clash
between miners and indigenous people and were working to find
and arrest those responsible for the shootings.
Lula has pledged zero tolerance for mining on indigenous
land protected by the Constitution and the environmental
protection agency is planning eviction operations on five other
reservations when illegal logging and mining increased under
previous President Jair Bolsonaro.
(Reporting by Marcela Ayres and Anthony Boadle; Editing by
Stephen Coates)
(Adds comments by two ministers)
BRASILIA, April 30 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government
assured the Yanomami people on Sunday that it will redouble
efforts to remove the remainder of the wildcat miners in the
reservation following the fatal shooting of a member of the
indigenous community.
Gold miners killed one man and seriously injured two others
in an attack on Saturday in the Yanomami territory, where
authorities have been evicting illegal miners who invaded
Brazil's largest indigenous reservation, the size of Portugal.
"We will continue the operation to remove all the miners
that are still there illegally," Minister of Indigenous People
Sonia Guajajara told GloboNews television channel.
She said about 80% of the more than 20,000 gold miners that
invaded the reservation had been evicted and those still there
were resisting removal more violently.
"They must understand that they have to leave and that the
state will not retreat from evicting them," Environment Minister
Marina Silva said in the same interview.
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