The following day six Aymara villagers, including an eight-year-old girl, were killed in a confrontation in the town of Warisata. Government forces used planes and helicopters to circumvent the strikers and evacuate several hundred foreign and Bolivian tourists from Sorata who had been stranded by the road blockades for five days. In response to the shootings, Bolivia's Labor Union (COB) called a general strike on September 29 that paralyzed the country with road closures. Union leaders insisted they would continue until the government backed down on its decision. Poorly armed Aymara community militias drove the army and police out of Warisata and the towns of Sorata and Achacachi, equipped only with traditional Aymara sling shots and guns from the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution. Eugenio Rojas, leader of the regional strike committee, declared that if the government refused to negotiate in Warisata, then the insurgent Aymara communities would surround La Paz and cut it off from the rest of the country — a tactic employed in the Túpaj Katari uprising of 1781. Felipe Quispe, leader of the Indigenous Pachakuti Movement (MIP), stated that he would not participate in dialogue with the government until the military withdrew from blockaded areas. The government refused to negotiate with Quispe, claiming that he did not have the authority to represent the campesino movement. As the protests continued, protesters in El Alto, a sprawling indigenous city of 750,000 people on the periphery of La Paz, proceeded to block key access routes to the capital causing severe fuel and food shortages. They also demanded the resignation of Sánchez de Lozada and his ministers, Yerko Kukoc, Minister of Government, and Carlos Sánchez de Berzaín, Minister of Defense, who were held responsible for the Warisata massacre. Protesters also voiced their opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement that was at the time under negotiation by the US and Latin American countries (since the November 2005 Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas, it has been put on stand-by). Martial law in El Alto On October 12, 2003 the government imposed martial law in El Alto after sixteen people were shot by the police and several dozen wounded in violent clashes which erupted when a caravan of oil trucks escorted by police and soldiers deploying tanks and heavy-caliber machine guns tried to breach a barricade. On October 13, the administration of Sánchez de Lozada suspended the gas