Lightning strike kills 11 members of remote Wiwa tribe in Colombia

Spiritual leaders of Wiwa tribe were struck in building while performing traditional ceremony

Colombian soldiers pick indigenous up in a helicopter to take them to receive medical treatment in Santa Marta. Eleven indigenous from the Wiwa ethnic group died after being hit by lightning as they performed a ceremony on a mountain of the Sierra Nevada (EPA)

Eleven members of a remote indigenous tribe in Colombia have been killed when a lightning bolt struck a thatch-roofed hut where they were gathered.

Military officials said that another 15 members of the Wiwa tribe that live high in the coastal Sierra Nevada range on the Caribbean coast were injured with second or third degree burns, six of them seriously. Sixty spiritual leaders were reported to be in the building at the time.

The electrical storm took place around midnight as the tribe was performing a traditional ceremony accompanied by tribe elders known as “Mamos" and were killed by "an electrical charge from a lightning bolt", the national ombudsman´s office said.

Additional reporting by AP