Peru roiled by tension after deadly Amazon clashes

By Marco Aquino

YURIMAGUAS, Peru (Reuters) - Indigenous protesters and Peru's army refused to back down and a truce looked distant on Saturday, after two battles in the Amazon jungle killed some 50 people in the worst crisis of President Alan Garcia's term.

Protesters said 30 of their own have died and the government said 22 security forces have perished in two days of clashes over the president's drive to bring foreign companies to the rainforest to open mines and drill for oil.

The bloodshed has prompted widespread calls for Garcia's prime minister to quit, underscored divisions between elites in Lima and the rural poor and threatened to derail the government's push to further open up Peru to foreign investors.

Thousands of Indians with wooden spears dug in at blockades on Saturday along remote Amazon highways, vowing to keep protesting if police did not halt efforts to break up their demonstrations.

About 10 police officers held by protesters were killed and another two dozen were freed by troops that moved in to end a hostage crisis, National Police Chief Miguel Hidalgo told RPP radio on Saturday. He said seven hostages were missing.

BATTLE AT 'DEVIL'S CURVE'

In an incident that triggered the hostage stand-off, 11 police died on Friday when they broke up a roadblock, about 870 miles north of Lima along a stretch of highway known as "Devil's Curve," the government said.

Thirty protesters died at the "Devil's Curve" clash, Champion Nonimgo from AIDESEP, Peru's leading indigenous rights group, said on Saturday. The government said nine protesters died.