From above, heavily armed police and officials from the Ibama environmental agency spot a camp: a brown patch of deforested land in the middle of the vast green carpet that is the Amazon.
There are improvised sleeping quarters, a kitchen, bathrooms. The sound of engines thrumming indicates the miners are not far away.
Government agents have already blocked illegal movement on the area's two main rivers, said Felipe Finger, an Ibama coordinator. "Now we are starting another phase -- to attack these mining operations, break up and neutralize these camps."
Spotting the helicopters, the "garimpeiros," or illegal miners, flee into the jungle, leaving behind sacks of cassiterite -- tin dioxide-rich ore known as "black gold" -- which they sell to commercial buyers.
While camouflage-wearing soldiers torch the camp, agents question a 36-year-old miner who failed to escape.
"Illegal mining is not going to end -- it has nothing to do with Lula or Bolsonaro," he says, referring to the current leftist president and his right-wing predecessor.
The miner, who gave his name as Eduardo, said he could make 5,000 reais ($1,000) a week working in the camp, adding, "where can you earn that in the city?"
Yanomami leaders say some 20,000 clandestine miners have invaded their territory, killing Indigenous people, sexually abusing women and adolescents and contaminating rivers with the mercury they use to separate gold from sediment.
- 'Nothing to eat' -
In January, the federal police opened an investigation of possible genocide linked to the miners' abuse of the Yanomami and their resources.
The move came after an official report found that around 100 young children had died in the area last year, some from malnutrition.
"We suffer from diarrhea and vomiting, we have no health care, people go hungry and we have nothing to eat," one Yanomami told AFP on Friday.
Brazil's air force has installed a field hospital in Boa Vista, capital of northern Roraima state, and the military said it has evacuated some 130 patients by helicopter from remote locations.
Early Thursday, armed miners aboard seven boats attacked an Ibama checkpoint on the Uraricoera river. One gang member was wounded in an exchange of fire, while the rest fled.
Authorities said the attack showed the criminals were feeling the pressure of the government operation.
Illegal mining rose sharply during the 2019-2022 presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who favored opening Indigenous lands to such activity.
Worst-ever February rainforest data for Brazilian Amazon
Brasilia (AFP) Feb 24, 2023 -
Brazilian Amazon deforestation reached its worst-ever February level in the second month of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's presidential term, provisional data showed Friday.
Surveillance satellites had detected 209 square kilometers (80.6 square miles) of forest destroyed,, according to the INPE space research institute's DETER monitoring system.
This is an area equivalent to about 30,000 football fields.
The INPE report included data only up to February 17, but was already an increase from the previous worst February, in 2022, when far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro was still in office.
Last month, Amazon deforestation was down 61 percent from a year earlier, according to the same source.
But experts warned at the time it was premature to talk of a "reversal" of the deforestation trend, partly because some forest loss may have been unobserved due to heavy cloud cover.
The February increase may partly reflect forest losses that were unobserved in January, WWF Brazil expert Daniel Silva told AFP.
Over Bolsonaro's presidency, average annual deforestation increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.
Bolsonaro instigated policies that favored the agriculture and logging industries mostly responsible for deforestation.
Having previously governed Brazil from 2003-10, Lula took office on January 1 this year with a promise to rebuild the government agencies tasked with protecting the environment after severe budget and personnel cuts inflicted on them by Bolsonaro.
He has also announced an ambitious goal of zero deforestation by 2030.
In order to do so he is counting on international aid, notably through the Amazon Fund, to which Germany and Norway are the main contributors.
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