Killing of two Mapuche sparks protest in Santiago

Dozens of Mapuche people demonstrated in the Chilean capital Santiago on Thursday, demanding justice for two of their members who were shot dead.

Demonstrators set barricades on fire to block one of the city's main avenues while police tried to disperse them with water cannons and tear gas.

The regions of La Araucanía and Biobío have been under a state of emergency over the past few weeks to stop a series of violent attacks and clashes between Indigenous groups and security forces.

Some 2,000 soldiers have arrived in the area to collaborate with the militarized police in enforcing the measure.

The protesters in Santiago on Thursday called for the military to pull out from the lands and said President Sebastián Piñera was responsible for the deaths.

Authorities believe the two people killed were wounded during a crossfire between a group of demonstrators and police personnel on Wednesday.

Earlier on Wednesday, a group of hooded men intercepted a couple of buses with workers and after vacating them, burned one.

In the same region, other unknown persons burned a house, a warehouse and an aggregates company.

The events occurred one day after hooded men derailed a train in La Araucanía and then set fire to some of the wagons that transported cellulose.

Around 12% of Chile's 19 million people are Mapuche Indigenous, and about half of them live within and around La Araucanía, many of them in poverty.

The most radicalized demand the restitution of ancestral lands that the Chilean state took from them by force at the end of the 18th century.