BRASILIA, May 1 (Reuters) - Brazilian police and
environmental protection agents were ambushed by illegal gold
miners on the Yanomami Indigenous reservation in the Amazon on
Monday and four miners were shot dead in the exchange of
gunfire, a government statement said.
The Environment Ministry said their team was attacked when
they moved in to dismantle a wildcat mining camp run by an
organized crime gang.
Brazilian authorities are keen to show that they mean
business in their efforts to remove the remainder of the wildcat
miners on the reservation following the fatal shooting of a
Yanomami man.
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.
According to Minister of Indigenous People Sonia Guajajara,
about 80% of the more than 20,000 gold miners that invaded the
reservation have been evicted and those still there are
resisting removal more violently.
Environment Minister Marina Silva said 300 mining camps had
been dismantled, and 20 planes and one helicopter destroyed by
agents of the environmental protection agency Ibama, that is
continuing to seek the remaining miners with the help of police.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed when he took
office in January to remove the miners, whose presence caused a
humanitarian crisis, 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.
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 where illegal logging and mining increased under
previous President Jair Bolsonaro.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle
Editing by Sandra Maler)
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