Masaya, a city battling at the front lines of Nicaragua's heated anti-government protests, once again became the scene of fierce street battles that a rights group said saw one man die of a bullet wound to the heart. Firearm bursts rang out on Saturday in the city home to 100,000 people, where riots that started midday grew increasingly violent as masked demonstrators wielding homemade mortars and slingshots fought to fend off armed security forces.
Alvaro Leiva, head of the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH), said at least one sexagenarian had died after a bullet struck his heart.
Leiva said the gunman was a sniper - implying a member of Ortega's security forces or government-backed vigilantes. The mortal wound came hours after the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) had raised to 137 the death toll in the Central American country, where demonstrations demanding President Daniel Ortega's ouster have raged since April 18. At least two people had died in violent protests overnight, the CENIDH told AFP, one in the northern city of Jinotega and another in Managua.
Leiva said conditions were growing increasingly grave "because we are talking about crossfire, not tear gas or rubber bullets." "The situation in this moment in Nicaragua is a crisis," he said. "We are asking the world to pay attention to Masaya."
The city just outside of the capital - known before for its tree-lined streets, traditional crafts and nearby volcano of the same name - has taken on the appearance of a war zone.
Demonstrators, many of them young men, huddled Saturday behind barricades constructed from cobblestones, felled trees and sheet metal, the ground littered with broken glass and spikes to further guarantee no cars would pass. "We are fighting here because of the massacre of many people, the death of many children," one protestor told AFP, saying he's been actively demonstrating in Masaya for 15 days. "We can say that between the government and the police, the police are supposed to protect the people," he said. "They're the ones who are shooting bullets at us."