Peru police, protesters clash over Newmont mine

The official, Reynaldo Nunez Campos, said most of the victims were being treated in the city of Cajamarca and the town of Celendin where the clashes occurred, near where the massive mine would be built.

"There are two dead in Celendin," he said on RPP radio.

President Ollanta Humala's interior ministry said earlier that two police officers had been injured by guns carried by protesters. It was not immediately clear if the dead were police officers.

Protesters have halted nearly all work on the mine since November saying it would cause pollution, harm water supplies, and fail to bring enough local economic benefits.

"We have been told the clashes continue," Agustin Moreno of Peru's human rights office said on RPP radio.

The president of the region of Cajamarca, Gregorio Santos, who has been a strident critic of the proposed mine, accused Humala's government of putting big miners ahead of poor peasants left behind by the country's economic boom.

"This is the government we have - everything for miners and bullets for the people," he said via Twitter. "Humala, this is the cost of defending the savage neoliberal economic model and multinational miners. This is the cost of not keeping your word."

Humala has said the project is vital for Peru as it would generate thousands of jobs and huge tax revenues in one of Latin America's fastest-growing economies.

Once a firebrand leftist, Humala has irked traditional allies on the left by drifting to the right since taking office a year ago and defending foreign investment and free trade.

(Reporting By Lima Newsroom; editing by Christopher Wilson)