Brazilian police and environmental protection agents were ambushed on Monday by illegal gold miners in the Amazon Yanomami indigenous reserve and four miners were killed in the shootout, according to a government statement.
The environment ministry said its team was attacked while moving to dismantle an illegal mining camp run by an organized crime gang.
Brazilian authorities are determined to show that they are serious about their efforts to evict the rest of the so-called “wild miners” from the reserve after a shootout that killed a Yanomami man.
Miners killed one man and seriously wounded two others in an attack Saturday in Yanomami territory, where authorities have been evicting illegal miners who invaded Brazil’s largest indigenous reserve, a territory the size of Portugal.
According to the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, close to 80% of the more than 20,000 gold miners who invaded the reserve have been evicted and those who remain there are resisting their expulsion with more violence.
Environment Minister Marina Silva said 300 mining camps had been dismantled and 20 planes and a helicopter destroyed by agents from the environmental protection agency Ibama, which is still searching for the remaining miners with the help of police.
Upon taking office in January, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to expel the minerswhose presence caused a humanitarian crisis, spreading disease and causing malnutrition among the Yanomami by reducing their hunting and poisoning the rivers.
Lula has promised zero tolerance for mining on constitutionally protected indigenous lands and the environmental protection agency plans eviction operations on five other reserves where illegal logging and mining increased during the term of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
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