Nicaragua clashes ‘leave eight dead including baby’

AT LEAST eight people including a baby were killed on 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).

The rights group says over 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 neigh- bourhoods 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 responsibility, saying that criminals in the uni- versity 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.

“Ortega’s government continues to repress and kill young people,” CENIDH said on Twitter.

According to Alvaro Leiva, secretary of the Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association, the attack against the university was intended “to plant terror in the population” ahead of a march planned for Saturday afternoon in memory of victims of the violence.

Later on Saturday organisers cancelled the march due to what they branded“indiscriminate” attacks by government forces. The organising Civil Alliance opposition called for a 48-hour strike among social sectors and trade unions to press for Ortega’s departure.

The Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference urged Ortega’s government and the opposition to return to the negotiating table on Monday to discuss a proposal to bring elections forward from 2021 to March 2019, in a bid to end the crisis.