Nine Electrocuted in Accident at Brazil Squatter Camp

Nine individuals had been killed at a squatter camp in northern Brazil when employees putting in an web antenna unintentionally touched a high-voltage energy line, electrocuting three workers and 6 residents, officers stated Sunday.

The accident, which occurred Saturday, additionally ignited an enormous hearth at the camp arrange by Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) exterior the city of Parauapebas, as a succession of squatter shacks went up in flames, stated the Para state hearth division.

“The houses and shacks are all very close to each other, built with highly combustible material — wood, thatch roofs, some with straw for insulation. That fueled the fire,” native hearth division commander Charles Catuaba informed AFP.

Authorities are nonetheless working to establish the charred stays of two of the victims, he stated.

Founded in 1984, the MST is a social and political motion that fights for entry to land for the poor in deeply unequal Brazil. Its land seizures have made it extremely controversial, with critics accusing it of radicalism.

Around 2,000 households lived in the camp exterior Parauapebas, which was baptized the “Land and Freedom” camp, the MST stated.

The tragedy was “the result of a society that didn’t give these families the opportunity to have a dignified place to live,” MST chief Joao Paulo Rodrigues stated in an announcement.

Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose Workers’ Party (PT) is a historic ally of the MST, has despatched his rural growth minister and the pinnacle of nationwide land reform company Incra to Para to “provide the federal government’s full support to the families of the victims of this tragedy,” his workplace stated in an announcement.

(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is printed from a syndicated information company feed – AFP)