CARACAS (AFP) – Clashes between Venezuela’s military and illegal gold miners killed at least one person on Wednesday during an eviction in a nature reserve bordering Colombia, officials and non governmental organisations (NGOs) said.
The country’s biggest natural reserve, the Yapacana National Park in Amazonas state on the border with Colombia and Brazil, has been ravaged by gold miners.
In Wednesday’s clashes, a group “attacked us with Molotov cocktails, spears and even firearms”, a military source told AFP.
The clashes left one man dead, indigenous lawyer Olnar Ortiz of the NGO Foro Penal, told AFP.
Four men wounded in the conflict were treated at a Colombian hospital near the border, officials said, including three Venezuelans aged 37, 35 and 23, and a Colombian aged 42.
