Brazilian police say members of a religious sect living deep in the Amazon have been arrested for beating and stabbing six people to death, including three children.

Six followers of the United Pentecostist Church of Brazil were detained, when police arrived at a remote rubber plantation in the state of Acre near the Peruvian border.

The killings were allegedly ordered by the cult's leader, Francisco Bezerra de Moraes, who said he'd heard voices telling him that the people should be punished.

The alarm was raised by a former sect member who managed to escape.

Brazil, the world's biggest Roman Catholic nation, also has thousands of religious sects and groups dotted over its vast territory.