Rights group: Nicaragua clashes leave eight dead

At least eight people including a baby were killed Saturday when pro-government forces clashed with opponents in Nicaragua, according to a rights group.

Seven people were killed in the capital Managua and one in Masaya and a baby was among the dead, said Georgina Ruiz, an activist with the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), AFP reported.

The rights group says more than 200 people have been killed in protests that started just over two months ago demanding President Daniel Ortega step down. Starting after midnight, police and paramilitary forces flooded six neighborhoods in the east of Managua, as well as the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) where scores of students are holed up.

Among the dead were two students killed in the university area and two minors who died in Managua — a 17-year-old and a baby who was shot in the head.

The baby was killed when his mother was taking him to a babysitter. “He was killed by a police gunshot. I saw them. They were police,” the mother Kenia Navarrete told news channel Cien por Cien Noticias. The government denied the charge, saying criminals in the university area were to blame.

UNAN is one of several student protest camps in Managua. About 450 students have been living there under plastic tarp tents and in class buildings, surrounded by empty bottles, old food and used rounds from their homemade mortars.