More than 35 tourists visiting Peru's Madre de Dios region were taken hostage on Wednesday by local leaders trying to force the central government in Lima to advance a highway project, Peruvian media reports.

The visitors, who include both Peruvian and foreign nationals, are being held in Boca Manú, a village in the isolated, low-lying Amazon rain forest area. The local mayor and an "action" committee forced them to hand over their cell phones and "cut off all types of communication" with the outside world, Perú21 detailed.

Boca Manú is the entrance point to the Manú National Park, a biosphere reserve where permanent human settlements are restricted to small communities of the Matsigenga Amazonian tribal nation, travel operator Marco Rosas told state news channel Canal N.

"They have been held since [Wednesday] ... and telephone communications have been cut off in the village of Boca Manú," Rosas said. "The captors have said that they will not free the tourists until their demands are met."

The chief demand, the agent reiterated, was for the government to construct a motorway to the village, a proposal complicated by the national park's protected status that could potentially have "devastating" effects for the biosphere, which is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"The government is not doing much" about the hostage situation, Rosas charged. "It is my understanding that it has dispatched a small delegation from Cusco," the capital of the neighboring Cusco Region -- separated from Madre de Dios by the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald, a series of small, low mountains.

The government representatives "will arrive in approximately six or seven hours as they have to travel by land," according to the travel operator's account. The hostages, who are being held at a beach, meanwhile, include a number of U.S. and European nationals, most of them students, Rosas detailed.

Groups of visitors to the Manú National Park are generally made up of medical and educational professionals, who travel there on invitation by the indigenous communities, as well as researchers who receive permits from Peru's National Institute of Natural Resources.