CARACAS-
A female student and a young supermarket worker were the latest fatalities from Venezuela’s political unrest as the death toll from 10 days of violence rose on Saturday to at least eight.
Both sides are mourning supporters killed in the worst turmoil since President Nicolas Maduro narrowly won an election in April 2013 to replace the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
The government blames “fascist groups” seeking a coup like the one that briefly ousted Chavez 12 years ago, while the opposition is accusing troops and pro-Maduro militants of attacking peaceful demonstrators.
Opposition officials and local media in central Carabobo state said a 23-year-old student, Geraldine Moreno, died in hospital on Saturday after being shot in the face with rubber bullets as security forces broke up a protest there on February 19.
“They told us there was nothing more they could do,” Moreno’s distraught mother, Rosa Orozco, told a local paper.
Officials in the capital Caracas said a 29-year-old man, Santiago Enrique Pedroza, was killed late on Friday when he rode his motorcycle into a cable strung across a main road in the eastern, middle-class neighborhood of Horizonte.
Anti-government protesters have repeatedly blocked streets in the area with trash, which they sometimes set on fire. Police and National Guard troops have often used teargas to scatter demonstrators before clearing away the obstacles.
“He was on his way home, he couldn’t see the cable because of the darkness, and it slit his throat,” Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres told state television.
“This was a young, hard-working man who had nothing to do with the insanity unleashed by these fascist right-wing murderers,” Torres said.
Five people have died from gunshot wounds, beginning on February 12 when two opposition supporters and a pro-government loyalist were shot after a peaceful opposition protest in central Caracas degenerated into running battles between riot police and hooded demonstrators.
Two other people were shot dead at protests around the country in the following days, and a sixth was run over by a car during a melee.
At dusk on Saturday, a couple of hundred opposition supporters hurled stones at police who fired back teargas near east Caracas’ Plaza Altamira, a hot-bed of opposition activism that has seen similar scuffles most nights in the last week.
The focus for the most serious trouble had been in the western states of Tachira and Merida, where the government has vowed to take “special measures” to restore order.
Residents said the situation in general was calmer than of late, but an opposition official said four people were hurt when government supporters on motorbikes attacked an opposition march in San Cristobal, capital of Tachira state.
