A fresh wave of violence claimed at least seven lives, including a baby, in Nicaragua as international criticism mounted against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega over its response to the protests against his rule.
The clashes began on Friday evening, hours after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights presented a report saying that the Nicaraguan government has violated human rights during the protests, which started in mid-April and have been met by a heavy-handed crackdown by security forces and allied civilian groups.
Opposition and civic groups called off a march planned for Saturday afternoon to honor those killed in the latest clashes.
The organizers said they wanted to avoid further bloodshed.
Saturday was also Father’s Day in Nicaragua.
Protesters are calling for Ortega’s ouster and opposition groups want presidential elections to be moved up by two years to next year. Nicaragua has no term limits and Ortega has yet to respond to the demand for early elections.
The Roman Catholic Church is mediating talks between opposition groups and the government, and Nicaraguan bishops have called for discussions to resume today.
Pablo Abrao, executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said on Twitter on Saturday that a technical team from the commission would meet with state authorities, members of civil society and religious leaders today.
Alvaro Leiva, director of the Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association, told Nicaraguans to be on alert for further violence, saying that more than 215 people have died since the unrest began.
“There’s a savage repression, there are executions, deaths, persecutions, kidnappings and a high risk of further bloodshed,” Leiva said.
A one-year-old was among those killed on Saturday.
The Nicaraguan police said the boy was struck by a bullet fired by a delinquent trying to prevent authorities from clearing road barricades in the capital, Managua.
However, his mother told a local TV station that police shot her son.
Two men were also shot dead nearby, local media reported.
The National Autonomous University of Nicaragua also came under attack early on Saturday.
Two students were killed, more than a dozen were wounded and at least six were missing, said priest Raul Zamora, who helped secure a ceasefire.
Students took over the state university in Managua nearly two months ago.
Two people were killed in the city of Masaya, where bishops had negotiated a truce just days earlier, the Red Cross said.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS