(Reuters) – Several people were injured when Guatemalan police clashed with rock-throwing Maya Indian protesters who burned property belonging to Canadian nickel miner Skye Resources Inc., police and local leaders said on Monday.

One officer was wounded by a rock on Sunday as the squatters occupying land owned by Skye resisted an order to leave a new area they invaded at the weekend, police spokeswoman Maria Fernandez said.

Two protesters, who want the company to cede land for subsistence farming, were hurt on Saturday in a police attempt to evict them from the site, a local Indian rights group said.

The group, Defensoria Q’eqchi’, said two protesters were arrested and two others had not been seen since the clashes.

The protesters left the area but later set fire to an outdoor structure the miner built recently to hold community meetings, said Federico Pop, an organizer working with the families.

“The people want to negotiate with the company to give over the land,” said Pop. “They are going to stay there until an agreement can be reached.” He said that for the moment he did not expect more violence.

Skye plans to reopen the long-dormant Fenix nickel project near Guatemala’s Lake Izabal and begin producing 11,000 tonnes of ferro-nickel late in 2008.

But environmental concerns and disputes over land rights prompted hundreds of Mayan families living near the site to occupy several areas within the company’s concession in mid-September.

A Skye representative said on Monday it was company policy not to comment on the situation, but a statement previously released by Skye said the occupied land is far from the nickel deposits and the situation is not affecting project activities, including an ongoing drill program.

The mid-size, Vancouver-based nickel miner has been eyed as a possible take-over target by mining giants Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, BHP Billiton and Xstrata Plc.

Fenix operated for a short period under a different name in the late 1970s but was mothballed in 1980 when nickel prices collapsed.

The mine was built by Canada’s Inco at the height of Guatemala’s civil war and was plagued by protests.

A 1998 United Nations-backed truth commission connected people employed by Inco’s then-subsidiary Exmibal to a number of extrajudicial killings of activists opposed to the mine.

Source: Reuters