Two dead, 23 hurt in Venezuela protests

Two people died and 23 were injured as rival protests linked to Venezuela's deepening economic crisis exploded into violence, a prosecutor said.
A pro-government demonstrator and a student were killed as demonstrations both for and against Venezuela's government escalated yesterday.
"We have two dead, unfortunately a member of the (pro-government) group Juan Montoya, shot dead, and student Bassil DaCosta, also shot dead," as well as 23 injured, said Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz.
Unidentified assailants earlier fired into a rally outside the attorney general's office in Caracas -- one of several held by both supporters and foes of the government over President Nicolas Maduro's handling of Venezuela's ailing economy.

The OPEC member nation -- with an institutionally socialist government dependent on oil revenues in a state-led system -- sits atop the world's largest proven reserves of crude.
Yet its economy has been battered by inflation of more than 50 per cent a year.

It has had economic problems go from bad to worse amid shortages of hard currency while dwindling supplies of consumer goods have frustrated some government supporters.
The government blames what it calls "bourgeois" local business interests for trying to profit from the its largely low- and middle-income political base. It has engaged in privatizations and unpopular currency controls.

In a speech broadcast on state television, National Assembly speaker Diosdado Cabello denounced "the killing of a fighting member of the Bolivarian Revolution in the Plaza La Candelaria" some 200 meters from where the opposition supporters were rallying.
"This is a provocation from the right," Cabello charged, calling for "calm and sanity."
Thousands of students, accompanied by several opposition politicians, had converged in downtown Caracas to denounce the economic policies of Maduro, who succeeded the late Hugo Chavez as president last year.
A day earlier, five youths were shot when more motorcycle-riding gunmen opened fire on protests in the Andean city of Merida, local media and student groups have said. Another 10 students participating in the protests were arrested.

Protesters demanded the release of students detained in Merida and elsewhere during recent demonstrations in the country's interior.