Armored vehicles roll into Oregon refuge

A convoy of armored vehicles rolled Thursday into a wildlife refuge in Oregon where a handful of armed protesters are holed up in a drawn-out standoff with the federal government that turned deadly this week.

Eleven people including the protest leader have been arrested since Tuesday when one of the group was shot dead in a bloody twist to the three-week occupation involving ranchers angry over federal land management policies.

According to an AFP photographer at the scene, armored vehicles were seen entering the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, appearing to point at an imminent intervention by law enforcement to drive out the last protesters.

Local newspaper The Oregonian said four people remain inside the reserve, down from an estimated 30 people who were there last week.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to respond to an AFP request for comment.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy repeated a call for the last holdouts to call off their movement and leave peacefully.

"Turn yourselves in and do not use physical force," the 40-year-old said in a statement released by his lawyers.

Bundy urged his supporters to "continue to defend liberty through our constitutional rights," including through the use of media and social media.

"We only had guns for our protection and never once pointed them at another individual or had any desire to do so," he added. "The people have a right to bear arms for their own protection. We never wanted bloodshed."

Bundy also said he was waiting "anxiously" to view police video footage showing the circumstances in which his friend Robert "LaVoy" Finicum -- the movement's de facto spokesman -- was killed during a police attempt to arrest him.

The details surrounding the incident Tuesday night are not yet known.

Police sources quoted by The Oregonian said shots were fired when Finicum and Bundy's 43-year-old brother Ryan disobeyed orders and resisted arrest after agents stopped their cars.

The Bundy brothers are the sons of Cliven Bundy, 69, a vitriolic anti-government activist who in 2014 engaged in an armed standoff with federal authorities over unpaid cattle grazing fees at his Nevada ranch.

Cliven Bundy claims that Finicum was shot "in cold blood" while he had his hands in the air.

Bundy and his supporters took over the wildlife refuge on January 2 to protest at the jailing of two local ranchers, Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, who were convicted of arson.

Their demands soon grew to include calls for the government to turn over area federal land to local ranchers. In Oregon, nearly 53 percent of the land is federally owned.

The Hammonds distanced themselves from the movement and voluntarily began their scheduled prison sentences after the occupation began.
Source :AFP