Twenty-nine wildcat diamond miners were killed in an apparent clash with indigenous people in Brazil's remote Rondonia state, police said Saturday.
Rondonia regional security official Dalton di Franco said 26 bodies were found in addition to three located earlier in the violence on the Roosevelt indigenous reserve.
The three first miners located were thought to have been killed April 7 and the others at an unknown later date, authorities said.
The reservation is in Rondonia state near the Bolivian border, where tensions have soared over the mining of diamonds, which is forbidden as is access to non-indigenous people.
Indigenous people and illegal miners however have been trafficking in contraband diamonds in the area for years.