The Venezuelan government says it is investigating allegations that unauthorized Brazilian gold miners killed dozens of Yanomami Indians in an attack in the Venezuelan Amazon . The announcement Wednesday followed calls for action this week by a Yanomami organization and other indigenous groups . The Venezuelan government said that two public officials had been asked to carry out the inquiry into the alleged attack from a helicopter . Survival International , a London-based organization that advocates tribal peoples ' rights worldwide , published online what it said was a declaration from a group of organizations representing indigenous peoples and communities in the Amazon about the alleged attack . The indigenous organization 's declaration said that the number of people killed had yet to be fully established , but that of about 80 Yanomami people who lived in the community , only three survivors had been found . The alleged attack on the community of Irotatheri in the Venezuelan municipality of Alto Orinoco , near the Brazilian border , is believed to have taken place in July . Survival said in its own report that information is only just beginning to emerge because of the remote location of the community . The Yanomami , who live in Venezuela and Brazil , are considered the largest indigenous group in the Americas that remains largely untouched by advances in the outside world . Anthropologists have described the tribe in a variety of ways , ranging from fierce warmongers to mystics to introspective intellectuals . In recent years , the tribe has been under increasing pressure as miners illegally entered their land in the search of profits . Miners in Brazil have transmitted diseases such as malaria and flu to the Yanomami , who have little resistance to such diseases , observers say . The site where the attack is alleged to have happened is a five-hour helicopter ride , or 15 days on foot , from Puerto Ayacucho , the main Venezuelan city in the Amazon , the government said . The harm caused to indigenous peoples and the environment by Brazilian gold miners working in the border area is a long-standing issue . The Brazilian police carried out an operation last month targeting miners operating on the Brazilian side of the border . In its report on the situation , Survival cited Yanomami people who had spoken to Indians who said they had seen burned bodies and bones in the area where the attack is alleged to have happened . One of the people it quoted , Luis Shatiwe Yanomami , a leader of the Yanomami organization Horonami , said he had been told that those who survived had been out hunting when the community 's communal house was set on fire . `` For three years we have been denouncing the situation , '' Survival quoted him as saying . `` There are lots of gold miners working illegally in the forest . '' Both Survival and the indigenous organizations referred to an attack in 1993 on the Yanomami community of Haximu in Brazil in which they said 16 Indians were killed . Several miners were subsequently convicted for their role in the attack , Survival said . The organizations called for a criminal investigation into the alleged attack in July , and for measures to clamp down on the illegal activities in the area . `` This is another appalling tragedy for the Yanomami -- heaping crime upon crime , '' said Stephen Corry , director of Survival . `` All Amazonian governments must stop the rampant illegal mining , logging and settlement in indigenous territories . '' Venezuela 's state-run refineries afflicted by mismanagement .
Venezuela has appointed two public officials to look into the allegations . Indigenous groups say only three survivors have been found from a community of about 80 . Harm caused by Brazilian gold miners in the Amazon region is a long-standing issue . The attack is alleged to have happened in July , but information is only now emerging .