Rights group: 15 Indians shot to death in Ecuador's Amazon jungle

QUITO, Ecuador (PR-Inside) Feb 14 2008 - Fifteen Huaorani Indians living in voluntary isolation in Ecuador's largest nature reserve have been shot to death, an indigenous organization said Wednesday.
Saul Quimutari, health director of the Huaorani Nationality Organization of Ecuador, told The Associated Press that a member of the Tagaeri and Taromenanes tribes in Yasuni National Park formed the organization that the 15 Indians were gunned down Sunday by Colombian loggers.
National police spokesman Patricio Quimzo told the AP that the police had «no information» about the incident.
Logging is prohibited in the Yasuni, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
Two Huaorani leaders are on their way to the area to investigate, Quimutari said.
Several indigenous groups live in isolation in the reserve and conflicts with loggers are common, but arrests are rare because of the tribes' isolation from outside society.
Yasuni, like much of the Amazon basin, has large quantities of mahogany and other trees valued as lumber.
The jungle area holds close to an estimated 1 billion barrels of crude, and President Rafael Correa's government is seeking a minimum of US$350 million a year from the international community over 10 years in return for not drilling in the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha fields there. He said the money would compensate Ecuador for income it can generate by drilling for oil at the site.