Nicaraguan forces on Friday attacked a university in the capital, Managua, and a neighborhood in opposition bastion Masaya, killing two in the latest violence to convulse the Central American country hit by months of unrest.
Political tensions have soared since protests against a now-aborted pension reform began on April 18 and mushroomed into general opposition to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his government.
Friday’s attacks came as Ortega called for peace during a day of strikes, the second in three months of anti-government protests that have left more than 270 dead.
Photo: Reuters
Two people were killed when government forces opened fire on the combative neighborhood of Monimbo in south Masaya, as Ortega and his supporters began a procession from the capital to the opposition stronghold 30km to the south.
One was a policeman, a local rights group representative said.
The march was to celebrate the June 1979 “retreat” that saw thousands of guerrillas withdraw from Managua to Masaya to regroup, before securing victory on July 19, 1979, when then-Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza fled the country.
On Friday, protesters erected barricades and vowed to prevent the former leftist guerrilla leader’s procession from passing through. It was delayed and limited to a driven caravan.
However, where Ortega was once hunkered down with allies in Masaya fighting against a dictatorship, the 72-year-old head of state now is now the one hated in the rebel heartland.
In Masaya, Ortega accused the opposition of acting “with venom and hate,” and appealed for a return to “the road of peace.”
At the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, where students have been holed up since protests began, a medic reported several injuries after pro-government forces opened fire.
“They all came with firearms, they came to kill,” one young person told reporters from a church near the university.
Meanwhile, banks, markets, gas stations, schools and shops kept their doors locked among deserted streets as Nicaragua’s opposition staged a 24-hour general strike on Friday, a day after five people were killed in violence surrounding anti-government protests.
Opposition supporters claimed the strike was respected across 90 percent of the country, while official media announced business as usual in several trade zones.
In cities such as Leon and Granada, only state-owned Petronic gas stations remained open.
Mercado Oriental, one of the biggest trade centers in Managua with 20,000 businesses, was almost entirely shuttered.
“I’m working out of necessity, but the strike is a weapon to put pressure on the government, because there is no end in sight to this situation,” Adolfo Diaz, a 67-year-old shoe shiner, told reporters while sitting alone in a hall at the Huembes market in east Managua, normally a bustling hub of about 4,500 businesses.
The strike, called by the opposition Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy group, came after four police officers and a protester died on Thursday as clashes erupted between opposition activists and government forces and their paramilitary allies in the southeast town of Morrito.
On Friday, police arrested opposition leader Medardo Mairena, accusing him of being a “terrorist” and having “organized” and “ordered” the “attack” against the murdered police and protester.
The opposition Civic Alliance denounced Mairena’s detention as an “act of intimidation.”
The opposition is demanding either early elections or the resignation of Ortega and his wife, Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo, accusing both of corruption, despotism and nepotism.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS