Woman killed as Venezuelans vote in ‘referendum’

VENEZUELA: Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans lined up across the country and in expatriate communities around the world yesterday to vote in a symbolic rejection of President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to rewrite the constitution, a proposal that’s raising tensions in a nation battered by shortages and anti-government protests.

A 61-year-old woman was killed and four people wounded by gunfire that erupted after government supporters on motorcycles swarmed an opposition polling site in a church in the traditionally pro-government Catia neighbourhood of western Caracas.

The opposition mayor of the Caracas borough of Sucre, Carlos Ocariz, said pro-government paramilitary groups attacked voters outside the Our Lady of Carmen Church around 3pm.

The chief prosecutor’s office said Xiomara Soledad Scott, a nurse, had been killed and four others wounded in the incident.

Video posted to social media showed massive crowds outside the church, then hundreds of people running in panic as motorcycle-riding men zoomed past and shots rang out. Maduro made no mention of the incident in comments on state television shortly after the official close of opposition polls at 4pm, but he called for an end to violence that he blamed on the opposition.

Later yesterday Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada said on Twitter that he was declaring former Mexican President Vicente Fox persona non grata and banning him from the country for conspiring to promote violence and foreign intervention.

Fox travelled to Venezuela on Sunday with a group of Latin American former presidents to show support for the opposition referendum.

Moncada offered no evidence to support his accusations. -AP