At least seven people were killed and 30 others injured on Tuesday in clashes between protesters and police in Guatemala, Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said.

Vielmann said the clashes happened when police tried to remove 1,800 landless farm workers from the Neuva Linda farm they had invaded in southern Guatemala on Tuesday morning. At least three policemen and four farm workers were killed.

The invasion was sparked by a local radio report that the owner of the farm was behind the killing of one of his employees last September.

A local judge in the area of Retalhuleu, about 180 km southwest of the capital, ruled that the farm workers broke the law by invading private property. Police were dispatched to the farm to enforce the ruling.

(Xinhua News Agency September 1, 2004)