A young demonstrator has died from a gunshot wound to the chest, raising to 48 the number of people killed in seven weeks of protests against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, officials said Sunday. More than 200,000 protesters took to the streets of Venezuela on Saturday, day 50 of an angry and sometimes deadly showdown with the unpopular President Nicolas Maduro.
As with many of the previous marches in the crisis-hit country, police fired tear gas at protesters in the capital suffering from dire shortages of the most basic of goods. The attorney general's office said gunmen were alleged to have opened fire Saturday on an anti-government demonstration in the western city of Valera.
"At that moment, (Edy Alejandro) Teran Aguilar received a bullet in the chest," it said in a statement. Also wounded in the shootings were an 18-year-old male and a 50-year-old woman, it said. Teran was 23. The opposition blames Maduro for the economic mess in oil-rich Venezuela, demanding early elections to replace the socialist who took over from the late Hugo Chavez. Seven weeks of street protests have left 47 people dead.
In Caracas alone, some 160,000 marched through the city trying to reach the Interior Ministry in the city center, said Edinson Ferrer, spokesman for the opposition coalition MUD, citing a preliminary estimate. Police firing tear gas broke up the demonstration and protesters responded by throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.
At least 46 people were injured in the eastern district of Chacao, the authorities said, including a woman hit by a vehicle. Riots were taking place on the city's outskirts overnight. In the western city of San Cristobal in Tachira state, an estimated 40,000-plus took to the streets. Maduro ordered 2,600 soldiers to Tachira this week to quell street violence and looting. In Caracas, demonstrators carried signs that read "We are millions against the dictatorship" and "No more dictatorship!" The protesters blame Maduro for shortages of food, medicine and such basics as soap and even toilet paper, saying he is manoeuvring to dodge calls for early elections.
"It's been 50 days of protests. I'm here with my two children, I can't get any milk, I can't get any food," said Mariangel, a 24-year-old businesswoman. The red, blue and yellow colours of the Venezuelan flag were painted on her face. Young men wearing hoods and gas masks carried makeshift shields of wood and metal. "This has been a massacre against the people," opposition leader Henrique Capriles said before the march got underway.
"Still, the more repression there is, the more we will resist and fight for Venezuela," he added. One of Capriles's lawyers delivered a report on the Venezuelan crisis to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Friday after Venezuelan officials "cancelled" the opposition leader's passport, preventing him from flying to New York.