2 protesters die in Venezuela violence
CARACAS: Two young men died in Venezuela as protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to rewrite the constitution shut down much of the capital.
Maduro is forging ahead with the plan despite massive, violent protests and the threat of US sanctions.
It comes as a senior diplomat resigned from the Venezuelan delegation to the UN in New York in protest against Maduro’s human rights violations.
Isaias Medina said he could no longer work for a government that advocated for human rights at the UN and violated them at the same time.
In Caracas, wealthier, proopposition neighbourhoods in the eastern part of the city were shuttered and silent until early afternoon yesterday, after improvised blockades left them almost entirely cut off from the rest of the city.
Groups of masked young men set fire to a handful of blockades and hurled stones at riot police, who fired back teargas.
The chief prosecutor’s office said Andres Uzcategui (23) was killed in a protest in the neighbourhood of La Isabelica in the central state of Carabobo and Ronney Eloy Tejera Soler (24) was killed in Los Teques on Caracas’ outskirts.
At least nine people were hurt in protests, the prosecutor’s office said. It offered no details about the circumstances of the killings.
The killings takes the death toll over nearly months of protests to at least 95. — AP