Caracas. Deaths and injuries reported amid ‘mother of all marches’ in Venezuela. At least two people have been killed and dozens injured in Venezuela as street battles erupted alongside a mass anti-government demonstration that the opposition billed as “the mother of all marches”.
A 17-year-old boy was fatally shot in the head in a neighbourhood of Caracas, while several hours later a woman was killed in gunfire during a rally in the Andean state of Tachira near the Colombian border.
At least one legislator had to be hospitalised, and images posted online showed opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles choking on teargas.
As night fell, a few thousand people were still gathered in a plaza in wealthy eastern Caracas as residents in nearby buildings banged pots and pans in a show of support. A group of youths with their faces covered tore down street signs and billboards for makeshift barricades. They then launched rocks and Molotov cocktails against lines of police and national guardsmen who responded with tear gas in cat-and-mouse skirmishes.
The opposition called for another protest on Thursday, raising the specter of prolonged disruption in the country.“Same place, same time,” said Capriles on Wednesday night. “If we were millions today, tomorrow we’ll be more.”
Demonstrators clash with police during protests in Caracas.
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Fears of bloodshed had been stoked after President Nicolás Maduro put troops on the streets, supplied guns to sympathetic civil militias and called for a simultaneous rally of his supporters against what he said was a United States-backed coup.
Wednesday’s deaths brought the total number of deaths at protests this month to seven.
The first victim on Wednesday, Carlos Moreno, was not taking part in the demonstration but was shot when government supporters approached an opposition gathering and opened fire, witnesses told Reuters. Moreno, who was three days from his 18th birthday, was shot in the head, and later died in the hospital.
Hours later, university student Paola Ramírez died in the opposition stronghold of San Cristóbal, after she and her boyfriend, were shot at by a group of men as they left a protest.
“We were on a motorbike and they were following us, shooting,” her boyfriend told Reuters. “I left her on a block where she was going to find her sister and I went to hide the bike. I heard shots and when I arrived she was on the ground. I tried to protect her as much as I could,” he said.
State TV images showed red-shirted government loyalists on the rival march “to defend the homeland”.
But their numbers were far exceeded by the tens of thousands who joined protests across Venezuela to express their anger and frustration at an administration that has led the country with the planet’s biggest oil supplies into the world’s deepest economic recession.
Banners reading “No more dictatorship” highlighted the steady erosion of democracy. In the past month, the supreme court attempted to circumvent Congress’s legislative powers – a power grab which was subsequently reversed, while opposition figurehead Capriles was banned from running for office for 15 years.
