Leader of Oregon wildlife refuge occupation arrested, one person killed

One person was killed when federal authorities arrested the leader of an armed occupation at a wildlife refuge in Oregon and several of his companions during a traffic stop on Tuesday, law enforcement sources said.

Another person was injured, police said.

It was not immediately clear if other armed individuals remained occupying the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon or if Bundy's arrest had ended the standoff, which began on Jan. 2.

Some 25 miles (40 km) of Highway 395 in northeast Oregon was shut down in both directions, a spokesman for the state department of transportation said.

Local media reported that a hospital in nearby Burns had been placed on lockdown. Reuters could not immediately confirm that report.

The takeover at Malheur was the latest flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over the U.S. government's control of millions acres of land in the West.

The occupiers said their move was in support of two local ranchers who were returned to prison this month for setting fires that spread to federal land. The ranchers' lawyer has said the occupiers do not speak for the family.

Law enforcement officials had largely kept their distance from the buildings at the refuge, 30 miles (48 km) south of the small town of Burns in rural southeast Oregon's Harney County, in the hope of avoiding a violent confrontation.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)