Indigenous People Free Over 100 Tourists They Abducted In Peruvian Amazon

Members of an Indigenous group on Friday freed more than 100 tourists whom they had abducted in the Peruvian Amazon a day earlier to protest what they called government inaction after an oil spill,...

On Friday, members of an indigenous group released more than 100 tourists they had kidnapped in the Peruvian Amazon the previous day in protest against what they described as government inaction after the oil spill, officials said.

The group of detained tourists - about 27 from the United States, Spain, France, Britain and Switzerland, and 80 from Peru itself -

It included many children.

"They are already returning to their places of origin," Tourism Minister Roberto Sanchez told reporters in Lima.

While traveling on a river boat, the two tourists were kidnapped on Thursday by members of the Koninico community to lobby for government intervention after the 2 spill on September 16,

500 tons of crude oil in the Koninico River.

Community leader Watson Trujillo said Thursday that the community had taken "radical action" to try to persuade the government to send a delegation to assess environmental damage in an area home to about 2,500 indigenous people.

on Friday,

The Peruvian Human Rights Ombudsman said negotiations had led to "Conneco's acceptance of our request for the release" of the tourists.

"They are liberating us all," Angela Ramirez, a cyclist from Peru who was among the tourists, told AFP later via WhatsApp.

She added that there was "a lot of concern,

Much exhaustion” as the group waited for news of their fate and slowly began to run out of water and food during the 28-hour ordeal.

BY
ProBuzzFeed