Brazil has rolled out tanks and hundreds of soldiers in personnel carriers in the Amazon Rainforest, in a major operation to protect the reserve home of small band of indigenous people from illegal loggers.

Survival International reports there are only about 450 Awa people surviving today, and a quarter of them wish to live in isolation from the rest of the world.  The group is considered to be the world’s most threatened tribe.

Already, the soldiers have shut down eight sawmills, and are stepping up enforcement of a court order that evicts all outsiders from the Awa reserve.

But the tribe has long suffered.  In the 1960s, a railway was built through the territory to service an iron mine.  It brought settlers, disease, and a conflict for 50 years until the establishment of an indigenous reserve in 2003. 

Right now, the soldiers are evicting illegal loggers on the periphery of the Awa reserve.  Survival International says that the army must also enter the indigenous reserve itself and evict all loggers and ranchers from the park.