[ clipped from the local paper - should be of interest ]
AP - Boa Vista, Brazil --- Yanomami Indians believed to have been
massacred in Brazil actually were killed in neighboring Venezuela,
and fewer of theStone Age tribesmen died than earlier reported,
investigators said.
The findings apparently absolve Brazil of responsibility for investigating
the killings, which drew attention to the plight of the 9,000 Yanomami on
a resource-riche reservation in the Amazon jungle.
"It's no longer our case," said Sydney Lemos, federal police chief of the
northwestern state of Roraima.
"The foreign ministry will now give the evidence our agents collected to the
Venezuelans so that this mystery can be solved once and for all." he said.
Lemos said a satellite test Monday indicated that the reported site of the
killings was about nine miles west of Brazil's unmarked Amazon border with
Venezuela.
Brazil's National Indian Foundation reported last week that 15 gold miners
had slaughtered 73 Yanomami in an attack Aug. 17 in remote norhwestern Brazil.
But investigators said the killings apparently occured in two separate attacks
on the Indians' Venezuelan reservation. A French anthropologist, Bruce Albert,
said 18 Indians were killed, not 73.