At least 20 dead in Peru clash over Amazon resources

(Recasts, updates death toll)

By Terry Wade and Marco Aquino

LIMA, June 5 (Reuters) - At least 20 people died and 50 were injured on Friday in clashes between Peruvian police and Amazon tribes opposed to foreign companies opening oil wells and mines in the rainforest.

Indigenous leaders accused police of shooting at hundreds of protesters from helicopters to end a road block on a remote jungle highway 870 miles (1,400 km) from Lima, the capital.

Police said the protesters fired first, but the tribesmen denied having guns and said they only bore their traditional spears.

Tribal leaders said a dozen protesters were killed, while the interior ministry said eight officers died in protests over the government's push to open up Peru to foreign investment. It was the first round of severe violence since demonstrations started in April.

"There are 12 dead ... from bullets shot from helicopters," indigenous leader Alberto Pizango told reporters in Lima.

"I hold the government of President Alan Garcia responsible for ordering this genocide," he said as the government issued a warrant for his arrest for encouraging the protests.

Thousands of Amazon natives, demanding more control over natural resources, have blocked roads and waterways off-and-on in a bid to force the government to revoke a series of investment laws passed last year and to revise concessions granted to foreign energy companies.

Garcia, whose approval ratings are at 30 percent, blamed protesters for provoking violence and said it was time to lift the blockades of roads, rivers and energy installations.

Argentina's Pluspetrol, which had already curtailed most work at its lot 1AB in northern Peru, said it had halted production. It normally pumps about a fifth of Peru's total oil output. In April, lot 1AB produced about 16,770 barrels a day.

"It appears that this is being done to generate disorder for electoral reasons," Garcia said.

Garcia's allies have at times linked the protests to populist opposition leader Ollanta Humala, who spooked investors when he nearly won the 2006 presidential race and is expected to run again in 2011.

Humala, who enjoys support among the rural poor, said Garcia's APRA party made a gross error on Thursday, when it blocked a motion in Congress to open debate on a law that tribal leaders want to revise or overturn.

Some of the controversial laws encouraging foreign investment in the Amazon were passed last year as Garcia moved to bring Peru's regulatory framework into compliance with a free-trade agreement with the United States.

"The government has decided to solve this social, economic and political problem not in Congress, where it should be solved, but on the battlefield," Humala said at a news conference. (Additional reporting by Dana Ford, editing by Anthony Boadle)