The president of the community of Cuninico, Watson Trujillo Acosta, assured Friday that the 150 tourists held for 24 hours, including Spaniards, on board various boats in the province of Loreto, will be released «before noon».
«The right and respect for life must prevail. In this context, we are going to provide the facilities so that the people who are on the boat can be transferred to their destinations. That will be before noon (local time),» he said in an interview with the Peruvian RPP.
The protesters, who are holding the tourists, belong to the district of Urarinas in Loreto province, and claim that two children and a woman have died in the area due to oil spills from a 40-year-old pipeline in the Cuninico river.
The Ombudsman’s Office has also communicated that the communities of Cuninico have accepted their request to release the people held in the Marañon River, a measure that, according to the agency’s Twitter profile, «will be executed shortly».
The tourists also include a one-month-old baby, people with disabilities and pregnant women. Of the nearly 70 foreign passengers, there are people with nationalities from the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Switzerland, as reported by the British channel Sky News.
The pipeline, which transports oil from the Amazon region to the northwestern city of Piura, has been the scene of several oil spills in recent years. According to the latest reports, the last oil spill of some 2,500 barrels into the Cuninico River took place on September 16.
