Members of a violent and isolated Amazon tribe shot two loggers dead with arrows in Peru, after several previous attacks and repeated warnings that a tree-cutting project had encroached on their territory, according to reports.
The Mashco Piro tribe — which is believed to be the biggest group of indigenous people living with no outside contact — opened fire in a remote section of the rainforest near the Las Piedras River Thursday, the UK Guardian reported.
A third logger was injured and two more were reported missing after the bow-and-arrow blitz, an indigenous advocacy group told the outlet.
“This is a tragedy that was entirely avoidable. The Peruvian authorities have known for years that this area that they chose to sell off for logging was actually the Mashco Piro’s territory,” said Caroline Pearce, executive director of Survival International.
The deadly attack came one day after a logging company — which has been chopping down trees on the border of the tribe’s jungle turf — lost its “sustainability certification” for eight months, the paper reported.
The firm, Canales Tahuamanu, was accused of building logging roads inside the tribe’s territory and was stripped of its certification by the country’s Forest Stewardship Council.
The indigenous group had previously fired arrows, reportedly in an illegal logging camp, leaving one logger wounded on July 27. In 2022, tribe members also shot arrows that killed one logger and left another injured.
Pearce said the controversial logging project put both the tribe and local workers in danger.
“By facilitating the logging and destruction of this rainforest they’re not only endangering the very survival of the Mashco Piro people, who are incredibly vulnerable to epidemics of disease brought in by outsiders, but they’ve knowingly put the lives of the logging workers in danger,” she said.
Peru’s ministry of culture, which oversees indigenous rights, said it’s investigating reports of the logger deaths. It plans to send a police helicopter to the area where the incident took place.
“Recent developments have heightened concerns regarding the potential risks to the Mashco Piro’s safety and wellbeing,” the agency said in a statement.
The tree-cutting firm has been granted permission to log on the jungle land since 2002 — and its activity has spread over more than 190 square miles, the Washington Post reported in May.
Roughly 50 members of the secluded tribe were captured in stunning footage emerging near a riverbank last month.
Despite the tribe’s isolation, members have had violent encounters with tourists and other indigenous groups in recent years.
Some have reportedly been seen firing arrows at tourist boats along with a “warning arrow” at a park ranger in Manu National Park.
The violence reached new heights when the group killed a member of another tribe, Nicolas “Shaco” Flores, who had been trying to contact them. Flores was shot in the heart with an arrow in 2011.
Some members of the tribe have reportedly also emerged from the forest in an attempt to trade machetes and food with residents of nearby villages along with Christian missionaries.