Brazil airlifts starving Yanomami tribal people from jungle

Brazil has airlifted 16 starving Yanomami tribal people to receive urgent treatment, after the Government declared a medical emergency.

The Indigenous people live in a reserve in Brazil's northern state of Roraima.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has accused his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro, of committing genocide against the rainforest tribe.

The Government declared a medical emergency after hundreds of Yanomami children died from malnutrition.

The deaths are linked to water pollution caused by mining and logging in the densely-forested area, where food insecurity is rife.

On Saturday President

Lula visited Roraima, which borders Venezuela and Guyana, following reports of severe malnutrition among Yanomami children and said he was "shocked" by what he found.

"More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was genocide: a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to suffering," he said later. "I came here to say we are going to treat our Indigenous people as human beings."

An estimated 28,000 Indigenous people live in the Yanomami reserve. They hunt, practise smallscale slash-and-burn agriculture and live in small, scattered, semi-permanent villages.

(Excerpt from BBC News)