The authorities in Colombia have warned that an outbreak of malaria is threatening the country's largest indigenous community, the Wayus.

A senior official of the Minister of Health said that seven Wayu Indians have died and almost four-thousand other cases of the disease were reported in the past two months.

Correspondents say unprecedented torrential rains have affected the normally arid region where the Wayus live in the northeastern department of The Guajira, leaving many pools of stagnant water in which malerial mosquitos can breed. There are more than one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand Wayu Indians in Colombia.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service