Death toll from Venezuela clashes rises to 45 as protests continue

  19 May 2017    Read: 1268
Death toll from Venezuela clashes rises to 45 as protests continue
A young man died Thursday after being run over by a van at a protest in northwestern Venezuela, bumping up the death toll from near-daily rallies to 45, the prosecutor general’s office said.
Paul Moreno, 25, died of a brain injury minutes after he was admitted to a hospital in the city of Maracaibo, a statement by the Public Ministry, a body controlled by the prosecutor general, read.

Venezuela’s lawmaker Juan Pablo Guanipa said Moreno was a medical student working for the Green Cross volunteer group of first responders. The legislator claimed the van had a motorcycle escort and blamed the government for his death.

In another development, a nephew of Liborio Guarulla, an opposition governor of the Amazonas state, was killed in the city of Puerto Ayacucho. The governor said on Twitter Eric Guarulla was the third person holding the post of the state’s archive chief to die.

Criminality spiked in Venezuela after an economic and political crisis worsened in the past years. Opposition leaders called on people to take to the streets in early April to protest Socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who is blamed for mismanaging the country.

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