WORLD NEWS: US - Militia leader arrested as one is killed in rural Oregon

A man has been killed and another wounded as federal officers arrested the leader of an anti-government militia occupying a wildlife refuge in rural Oregon.

Shots were fired as Ammon Bundy was taken into custody along with four other people during a traffic stop along Highway 395 around 4.25pm (local time), the FBI said.
Those arrested all had leadership roles in the militia laying seige to the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the agency said.

Authorities did not release the identity of the person killed, but said they were intending to arrest him.

Protesters were understood to be still occupying the refuge following the confrontation and the FBI has set up a cordon around the complex.

Bundy, 40, was reportedly on the way to a community meeting he was scheduled to speak at when authorities stopped his vehicle.

Ryan Bundy, Ammon's brother, suffered a minor gunshot wound during the arrests, the Oregonian newspaper reported.

A 25 mile (40 km) stretch of the highway was shut following the incident.

Another person was also arrested by state police around an hour-and-a-half later in a separate incident in Burns, Oregon.

The six people arrested face federal charges of conspiracy to use force, intimidation or threats to impede federal officers from discharging their duties, the FBI said.

The activist group took over the refuge on 2 January.

Bundy said they were acting at the request of a rancher who wanted to graze his cattle on federal property, but was stopped from doing so when the US Fish and Wildlife Service put up a fence last year.

The occupiers also said they were supporting two local ranchers who were sent back to prison this month for setting fires that spread to federal land. Both ranchers have distanced themselves from the movement.

Burns Mayor Craig LaFollette said: "I think my perception is that people's patience was running thin and that the community as a whole was looking for some resolution and to have these people leave."

The occupation is the latest flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over the US government's control of millions acres of land in the West.

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