At least 2 killed in Mexico's Lacandon jungle clash

MEXICO CITY, Nov 15 (Reuters) Indians clashing over land in the remote Lacandon jungle in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas have killed at least two people and have threatened to murder prisoners.

Lacandon Indians of Nueva Palestina, wielding rifles and machetes, tried early Monday to evict neighboring Indians from land they believe belongs to them.

Police said two people were shot dead in the ensuing fight in the neighboring community of Viejo Velasco, but two human rights and environmental groups said they heard reports that up to 13 people from both sides were killed.

The Lacandon Indians have threatened to kill prisoners taken during the skirmish if their own wounded die, Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste, an environmental group that works with communities in region, said in a news release.

''They're going to kill the people from Viejo Velasco they have taken prisoner,'' the group said.

The violence follows years of feuding over land allotted to Lacandon Indians decades ago when the federal government confiscated parts of the remote jungle for logging and to create a biological reserve.

State police flying over the scene of the fight saw two dead bodies, but officers had not yet arrived on the scene.

The Lacandons, who experts say only number a few hundred, were once one of Latin America's most isolated indigenous groups, living in the thick jungle while the Spanish colonized the rest of the region.

They were largely ignored until the 20th century, when Indians from other areas of Chiapas began to encroach on the jungle region near the border with Guatemala.

Chiapas, one of Mexico's poorest and most socially volatile states, is home to the Zapatista leftist rebel force that burst from jungles in 1994 in a brief but bloody uprising.

Reuters PDS VP0628