Police Hostages Die in Peru Protest

At least nine police officers, seized by indigenous protesters in Peru, have been killed as their colleagues attempted to rescue them, officials said.

Security forces launched the operation early on Saturday after the demonstrators took control of an oil-pumping station in the western Amazon and took 38 officers hostage.

"Of the 38 police officers who were taken hostage at the [petrol] facility, where they were providing security protection ... 22 have been rescued by the army, nine have died at the hands of the natives and seven have disappeared," Miguel Hidalgo, a police chief, told local radio.

Also on Saturday, a judge has ordered the arrest Alberto Pizango, the leader of the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association, on charges of sedition for allegedly inciting the violence in the western Amazon.

Pizango has accused the government of Alan Garcia, the president, of ordering "genocide" when attacked the roadblock, which had been manned by thousands of protesters, some armed with spears.

At the heart of the dispute are laws passed last year as Garcia sought to bring Peru's regulatory framework into compliance with a free-trade agreement with the US.

The protests have provoked national debate about government policies in the Amazon that ignore indigenous peoples and encourage large-scale extractive industries in Amazonian lands. Indigenous peoples assert that new laws undermine their rights and open up their ancestral lands to private companies for mining, logging, plantations, and oil drilling without their consultation or consent.