CARACAS, Venezuela -- At least 12 people were killed overnight during looting and violence in Venezuela's capital over a spiraling political crisis, authorities said Friday.
The attorney general's office in Venezuela said 11 people had died of electrocution and gunshot wounds "in acts of violence" in El Valle, a working-class neighborhood near Caracas' biggest military base where opposition leaders say a group of people were hit with an electrical current while trying to steal a refrigerator from a bakery.
Two days of protests on the streets of Caracas against the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro spilled into a violent Thursday night in several parts of the city, with repetitive gunfire, street barricades set aflame and more than two dozen businesses looted. Amid the confusion, mothers and newborn children had to be evacuated from a maternity hospital when it was swamped with tear gas.
The Public Ministry said the 11 people killed in El Valle were all men between the ages of 17 and 45. Another death was reported east of Caracas in El Sucre. Six other people were injured.
"This was a war," said Liliana Altuna, whose butcher shop was ransacked by looters armed with guns.
Opposition leaders accused the government of repressing protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets but standing idly by as businesses were looted. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez pointed a finger at the opposition, saying armed groups controlled by the government's foes were responsible for the attack at the hospital.
"We reject and do not accept those irresponsible declarations," said Henrique Capriles, a former opposition candidate for the presidency whom the government recently barred from running for public office.
Aware of Venezuela's history of military rebellions, Maduro has worked to secure the loyalty of commanders, granting them influential roles and benefits. But with some fissures emerging in his government, and the economy cratering, the opposition sees an opportunity to apply pressure on the embattled president through an institution crucial to his survival.
The leader of the opposition-controlled legislature, Julio Borges, has made repeated statements in recent weeks asking the armed forces to "break their silence." He insists that Maduro has "kidnapped" once-prestigious military institutions, making them complicit in the government's corruption and human-rights abuses.
"Part of our daily struggle is for the armed forces to no longer be held hostage by a powerful few, and become democratic forces fighting for Venezuela's constitution," Borges said this week.
He and other Maduro opponents insist they are not calling for a military coup. With Venezuela's economy tanking and the president's approval rating hovering at about 20 percent, they want the government to schedule elections as soon as possible, confident in a path to power through the ballot box, not the barracks.
But they also appear desperate for a referee in their standoff with the government, given that international mediation attempts by the Vatican and others have stalled.
Overall, at least 20 people have been killed in the unrest that broke out after the government-stacked Supreme Court gutted the congress of its last vestiges of power three weeks ago -- a move later reversed amid a storm of international criticism. In addition to demanding new elections, opponents are denouncing a government they deem a dictatorship responsible for triple-digit inflation, soaring crime and widespread shortages of food and medical supplies.
The violence began Thursday night and stretched into Friday in El Valle, an area historically known as a hot spot for political protest. Witnesses said masked looters wielding knives and guns descended on an area known as "the little market" filled with bakeries, supermarkets and butcher's shops.
"They left us with nothing," said Manuel Martinez, who was directing cleanup and repairs at a destroyed grocery store.
"What they did wasn't because of hunger," he added. "It's vandalism."
The chaos turned deadly when looters entered a bakery protected by an electric fence and tried to remove a refrigerator. The accounts varied, but one opposition leader said 13 people were hit with an electrical current after tossing containers filled with water and making contact with the refrigerator's power cord.
Mary Carmen Laguna Andrade, 23, who lives in El Valle, said she watched as looters prowled the streets into the early hours of the morning.
"They passed my house with food, liquor bottles, shopping carts, computers and even a motorcycle they'd stolen," she said.
Earlier Friday, officials reported that one of the dead was Mervins Guitian. The young Venezuelan man was fatally shot when he was returning home late from work Thursday and got caught in the middle of late-night street clashes. Vicente Paez, a local councilman, said Guitian was an employee of a Caracas-area city governed by an opposition mayor but didn't join the protests. It wasn't clear who shot him, and there was no immediate comment from authorities.
Venezuelan social media was flooded late into the night with cellphone videos of light-armored vehicles plowing down streets to control pockets of protesters who set up burning barricades in several neighborhoods.
Vice President Tareck El Aissami said Friday that the country is facing an "unconventional war" led by opposition groups working in concert with criminal gangs. He said the opposition's claims that government forces were responsible for firing tear gas at the maternity hospital were another attempt to demoralize a people who have "decided to break ties with the bourgeoisie forever."
Opposition members said they have no intention of easing up on protests.
"Twenty days of resistance, and we feel newly born," opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara said at an outdoor news conference Thursday as residents looking out from balconies in a neighborhood at the heart of the protest movement cheered loudly in support.
The next planned protest is today, when opponents are being asked to dress in white and march silently to commemorate the victims of the demonstration. Sit-ins to block major highways are planned for Monday.
As tensions mount, the government is using its almost-complete control of Venezuela's institutions to pursue its opponents. On Wednesday alone, 565 protesters were arrested nationwide, according to Penal Forum, a group that provides legal assistance to detainees. It said 334 remained in jail Thursday.
Information for this article was contributed by Joshua Goodman, Fabiola Sanchez, Juan Carlos Hernandez, Tom Krisher and Christine Armario of The Associated Press; by Mariana Zuniga and Nick Miroff of The Washington Post; and by Nicholas Casey, Patricia Torres and Ana Vanessa Herrero of The New York Times.
A Section on 04/22/2017