'Flying Aliens' Harassing Village Are Actually Illegal Miners With Jetpacks
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The mysterious attacks began on July 11. "Strange beings," locals said, visiting an isolated Indigenous community in rural Peru at night, harassing its inhabitants and attempting to kidnap a 15-year-old girl. [...] News of the alleged extraterrestrial attackers quickly spread online as believers, skeptics, and internet sleuths around the world analyzed grainy videos posted by members of the Ikitu community. The reported sightings came on the heels of U.S. congressional hearings about unidentified aerial phenomenon that ignited a global conversation about the possibility of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth. Members of the Peruvian Navy and Police traveled to the isolated community, which is located 10 hours by boat from the Maynas provincial capital of Iquitos, to investigate the strange disturbances in early August. Last week, authorities announced that they believed the perpetrators were members of illegal gold mining gangs from Colombia and Brazil using advanced flying technology to terrorize the community, according to RPP Noticias. Carlos Castro Quintanilla, the lead investigator in the case, said that 80 percent of illegal gold dredging in the region is located in the Nanay river basin, where the Ikitu community is located. One of the key pieces to the investigation was related to the attempted kidnapping of a 15-year-old girl on July 29. Cristian Caleb Pacaya, a local teacher who witnessed the attack, said that they "were using state of the art technology, like thrusters that allow people to fly." He said that after looking the devices up on Google, he believed that they were "jetpacks." Authorities have not made any arrests related to the attacks, nor named the alleged assailants or their organization directly. However, the prosecutors office claimed that they had destroyed 110 dredging operations and 10 illegal mining camps in the area already in 2023.
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