Students battled tear gas-throwing police officers in demonstrations across Venezuela's capital Thursday as a two-month-old protest movement that shows no signs of letting up claimed more lives. Soldiers bathed hundreds of protesters in tear gas at the Central University of Venezuela, with medics in gas masks attending to students with bloodied faces and limbs. Gunfire erupted at a student gathering in El Tigre, a city southeast of Caracas, leaving Juan Lopez, 33, dead and three others injured, according to the chief prosecutor’s office. According to preliminary reports, an assailant fired at Lopez toward the end of the meeting and then fled on a motorcycle. Lopez was the president of a university federation. Officials say violence around the protests, and the opposition’s unwillingness to hold talks, left Mr Maduro with no choice but to shake up Venezuela’s governing apparatus. Earlier today, authorities announced that a 38-year-old police officer in the central state of Carabobo had died of his injuries after being shot during a Wednesday protest that had hundreds of thousands of people on the street nationwide. More than 700 others have been wounded, no small matter in a country with crippling medical shortages. Overall, more than 1,000 have been arrested. Protesters are demanding immediate presidential elections. President Nicolas Maduro accuses the opposition of attempting a coup, and has responded with an initiative to rewrite the constitution.
A student is killed amid gunfire in El Tigre, raising the death toll in protests against Nicolás Maduro's government to at least 37 in the past month.