Two people were killed and nearly 70 wounded in street battles in the city of Cochabamba in central Bolivia on Thursday, with national and regional leaders blaming each other for the political violence.
Supporters of leftist President Evo Morales, who want Cochabamba's provincial Governor Man-fred Reyes Villa to resign, fought the governor's backers with guns, sticks and stones.
Bolivian military officials estimated that two rival factions together totaling more than 30,000 demonstrators overran police in the streets of Cochabamba on Thursday during the fourth straight day of protests.
Authorities claimed a force of 1,500 soldiers has been dispatched to the city to restore order. But the downtown streets were deserted late on Thursday night, empty of both protesters and soldiers.
Pro-Morales protesters have for four days packed the streets and plazas of Cochabamba, 200km southeast of La Paz, to demand the resignation of Cochabamba state governor Manfred Reyes Villa for his opposition to the president.
But a counterprotest in support of Reyes on Thursday met the demonstrators head on. Images of the two sides beating each other with sticks in Cochabamba's picturesque plazas were broadcast on national television.
The battle took place on a day when Reyes, a former presidential candidate widely considered to still harbor national ambitions, had traveled to the Bolivian capital La Paz for a summit with four other governors to develop a political strategy in opposition to Morales.
Reyes Villa, like several other governors in South America's poorest country, is at odds with the national government over his drive for more autonomy for his region.
"Unfortunately, today there has been an unfair clash," Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera told reporters in La Paz. "We have to report 68 people injured, most of them after being hit by rocks or sticks, many with gunfire wounds."
Garcia Linera said one of the two dead, a coca-leaf farmer, was killed by a bullet. He blamed the bloodshed on Reyes Villa and said Congress should consider a law to revoke his mandate.
"There has been a clash because the governor has not accomplished his constitutional duties to exercise control and resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner," Garcia Linera said.
The vice president said Reyes abandoned his state during a crisis.
``He left Cochabamba despite the severity of the conflict and came to La Paz to play politics, to conspire against the government, to prepare more demonstrations,'' Garcia Linera said. ``The duty of the governor is to be with his people, back there in Cochabamba, seeking peace, seeking solutions.''
Earlier, Reyes Villa told a news conference that Morales, who was in Nicaragua for Daniel Ortega's presidential inauguration, was responsible for the violence because he had not asked supporters to halt their protest.
Morales, the country's first indigenous president, is very popular in the Cochabamba region, where he came to prominence leading protests by coca-leaf farmers.
Television images showed hundreds of men running through the streets of Cochabamba as onlookers applausded from windows and police in riot gear fired tear gas.
One man sat on a curb with his face and shirt covered in blood.
The vice president said police and the army pacified the city late on Thursday and that they would stay in Cochabamba indefinitely to prevent further bloodshed.
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