Peru’s National Prosecutor’s Office is accusing gold mining gangs of staging flying “alien” attacks designed to terrorize local residents.
Locals in Alto Nanay, a hamlet of about 3,000 people in the northern Amazon Basin, reported seeing “armored” and “floating” 7-foot aliens wearing dark-colored hoods flying around since mid-July. Some claimed the creatures were impervious to bullets.
Many speculated it was the “Face Peelers,” a local superstition, or “green goblins,” but the prosecutor’s office suspects the “aliens” are members of local gold mining gangs, the Daily Mail reported.
Prosecutors believe the gangs are hoping to invoke fear in locals to keep them inside their homes and away from their illegal gold mines. They speculated that the gangs are using jetpacks to reach more unattainable spots in the dense jungles near the Nanay River to mine for more gold, the British outlet reported.
“They would be using state-of-the-art technology, such as thrusters that allow people to fly,” Carlos Castro Quintanilla, the Peruvian government’s prosecutor investigating the case, told Radio Programas del Perú.
Alto Nanay is rich in gold, where the metal is deposited in the riverbeds.
Quintanilla, a specialized prosecutor for environmental matters in the Loreto region, which includes Alto Nanay, told RPP that these gangs do 80% of their illegal business in the Nanay River basin.
Jairo Reátegui Ávila, the leader of the Ikitu indigenous people who live in the region, was the first to call the men “aliens,” telling the radio station that they were “frightened by what is happening in the community.”
‘I have shot him twice and he does not fall, but rises and disappears,’ he told RPP.
A 15-year-old reportedly was cut on the neck in one of the attacks and required treatment at a hospital, Daily Mail reported.
The Ikitu community has asked the military to intervene. Citizens have organized night patrols to find the attackers, according to Daily Mail.
Gold mining is largely unregulated in Peru. Artisanal mining boomed when the company hit a financial crisis in 2008, causing gold to be more profitable than drug trafficking.
Gold mining gangs have been expelled from the neighboring countries of Brazil and Colombia.