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Nicaraguan president faces call for resignation, violent protests

Tue Apr 26, 1:40 AM ET

MANAGUA (AFP) - At least 19 people were injured as protestors angry with a bus fare hike clashed with police across the capital, a human rights group said, while a majority of Nicaraguan mayors asked President Enrique Bolanos to resign over the unrest.

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Thousands of university students and other Nicaraguans took to the streets of Managua, which were covered in smoke from tires set ablaze by demonstrators and tear gas thrown by police.

One police officer was seriously injured after he was hit in the chest by a homemade mortar, police said. Another officer lost his right eye, said Nicaraguan Human Rights Center president Vilma Nunez.

Two other police and a television cameraman suffered minor injuries and a dozen injured students were stuck in their schools, unable to reach hospitals, she added.

At least 30 demonstrators were arrested as hundreds of police officers were deployed in Managua.

A statement signed by 96 of Nicaragua's 152 mayors asks Bolanos to resign if he cannot handle the unrest.

"If the president cannot or does not wish to take responsibility for the job he was elected to, with all respect and seriousness we ask him to resign," said the mayors, from Bolanos' rightist Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC) and the leftist Sandanista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

Bolanos' spokesman discarded the possibility of instituting a state of emergency.

"The president has acted in accordance to the constitution and the law," said Bolanos' spokesman, Lindolfo Monjarretz. "He will not do anything that goes against the country's institutions."

The protests started at the Agriculture University in the north of the capital, where police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at students who blocked off a road, said National Students Union president Yasser Martinez.

Some 1,000 students from Central American University and Engineering University massed in downtown Managua, resisting police.

Another 300 students from Autonomous National University of Nicaragua faced anti-riot police in southern Managua. Some bloodied students were seen trying to take refuge from the violence, and ambulances were unable to get to the wounded.

Hundreds of economy university students, wearing hoods, built barricades in the east of the capital, near the main market.

"We can't take the unemployment and the rise in bus fares and fuel anymore," said Carlos Lopez, a protestor who was arrested.

Students have been protesting for three weeks over a three-cent rise in bus fares, which have been going up along with the price of fuel. Non-students joined the protests for the first time Monday.

The bus drivers' union announced it would strike indefinitely and will march with university students Tuesday to demand a solution to the transportation crisis.


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