Shooting heightens tensions in Brazil Indian conflict

RIO DE JANEIRO: A clash between Indian settlers and a rice farmer so alarmed Brazilian officials that the nation's justice minister flew to a remote Amazon reservation on Tuesday, seeking to prevent more bloodshed.

Tarso Genro was trying to defuse the conflict that erupted when gunmen working for a plantation owner opened fire on Indians building homes on the Raposa Serra do Sol Indian reservation on Monday.

At least 10 were wounded, and one remained hospitalized in serious condition, said Dionito de Souza, a Macuxi Indian chief and coordinator of the Roraima Indigenous Council.

"They were building houses on land close to the farm and the gunmen just came shooting," said Souza in telephone interview. Federal Police General Director Luiz Fernando Correia already had flown to the region to oversee a peacekeeping operation.

The government officially recognized the reservation in 2005, a measure that requires outsiders to leave.

But owners of six big rice farms and other settlers have used legal appeals and sometimes violent protests to block their ouster. In April, the Supreme Court ordered the government to suspend an operation to remove the settlers until justices can study the issue.

Farm owner Paulo Cesar Quartiero said his men fired in self-defense Monday after Indians refused to leave his property and attacked them with clubs and arrows.

Amateur video footage aired on Globo TV showed hooded gunmen shooting and throwing things at the Indians that the network described as "homemade bombs."