Two indigenous people dead in Peru after coronavirus-related clash with police

Peruvian indigenous people angry over the coronavirus pandemic and armed with spears attacked a settlement for oil workers deep in the Amazon, triggering a police raid that left at least two natives dead, the government said Sunday.

Frustrated over oil spills and what they say is government neglect of natives in the coronavirus crisis, around 70 indigenous people attacked the oil company settlement around midnight Saturday to try to halt work at a well in the remote town of Bretana in the Loreto region.

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The indigenous people complain that the well, known as Lot 95 and operated by a Canadian-owned company called PetroTal, has caused pollution in their lands through a series of oil spills.

The company said after the clash it was suspending work at the site, where it employs about 100 people.

The Interior Ministry, which provided a toll from the clash, said six police officers and 11 native people were injured, besides the two native fatalities.

ORPIO, an umbrella organisation representing indigenous people in the Peruvian part of the Amazon, said the attack was against "the oil company and the State because of neglect and abandonment of their loved ones through lack of treatment and medicine" in the pandemic.

"Our indigenous brothers did not have firearms. They only carried spears as an ancestral tool of defence," ORPIO said in a statement.

"They wanted to take over the oil camp," it said.

The government said a prosecutor was with police who opened fire to repel the indigenous people's attack.

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The pandemic has exacted an awful toll on the dozens of indigenous peoples that live in poverty in the Peruvian Amazon.

Authorities estimate that in Iquitos, for instance, the main city in the Peruvian Amazon, seven of every 10 people have been infected with the virus.

In May, its morgues were overflowing and hospitals were desperately short of oxygen tanks.

The Loreto region is one of the vastest and least populated in Peru and one of the hardest-hit by the pandemic.

In the Amazon, there are few roads -- transport is mainly by the river -- so the government has been airlifting in medical supplies.

Peru has suffered more than 20,000 deaths from the virus, putting it behind only Brazil and Mexico as the nations hit worst by the crisis sweeping the globe.