Clashes between Venezuela's military and illegal gold miners killed at least one person Wednesday during an eviction in a nature reserve bordering Colombia, officials and NGOs said.

The country's biggest natural reserve, the Yapacana National Park in Amazonas state on the border with Colombia and Brazil, has been ravaged by gold miners.

In Wednesday's clashes, a group "attacked us with Molotov cocktails, spears and even firearms," a military source told AFP.

The clashes left one man dead, indigenous lawyer Olnar Ortiz of the NGO Foro Penal, told AFP.

Four men wounded in the conflict were treated at a Colombian hospital near the border, officials said, including three Venezuelans aged 37, 35 and 23, and a Colombian aged 42.

"We have received four male patients from the mine," Oscar Eduardo Orozco Villareal, deputy manager of health services, told local media.

Since July 1, "more than 11,594 illegal miners have been evicted from Yapacana National Park for disrespecting Venezuelan territorial law," regional General Domingo Hernandez Larez said on social media.

Local miners operate in the reserve, but also foreigners from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador.

They have engaged in "logging, burning of forests, contamination of water sources, (and) underground drilling", through "the use of high-pressure hoses and machinery to remove the topsoil, and the use of polluting agents, among others," Hernandez Larez said.

The environmental NGO SOS Orinoco, said that in August 2023 there were about 23 illegal mines affecting 3,316 hectares (8,194 acres) of the 320,000-hectare park.

© Agence France-Presse