WORLD : Brazil Rain Forest Activist Slain

SAO PAULO, Brazil —  An unidentified gunman shot and killed a well-known union leader who opposed the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, the National Rural Workers Movement said today.

Expedito Ribeiro de Souza, president of the Farm Workers Union in Rio Maria, a town in the Amazon state of Para about 2,000 miles northwest of Sao Paulo, was shot four times in the head Saturday night as he was leaving his office.

The brutal killing made headlines in major Brazilian newspapers, which compared Souza to Chico Mendes, leader of a campaign to protect the rain forest who was fatally shot in 1988 in back of his home in a western Amazon town. A cattle rancher and his son were convicted of the Mendes murder.