Activists faced off with Nicaraguan pro-government forces in hours of deadly clashes Thursday amid a nationwide strike to protest government repression of dissent that has left at least 162 dead, including an altar boy.
Despite the 24-hour work stoppage that gave the capital Managua the air of a ghost town, fierce unrest in other areas persisted, leaving at least four dead during pro-government attacks on activists guarding barricades.
Managua’s auxiliary bishop Silvio Jose Baez reported that a 15-year-old altar boy from the country’s second largest city Leon died after a paramilitary’s bullet struck him in the chest.
“God welcomes (him) to the altar of heaven,” the bishop tweeted.
He also warned of riot police indiscriminately shooting in the streets of Nindiri, a city 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Managua.
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) raised to 162 the death toll from two months of sociopolitical upheaval that President Daniel Ortega’s government has met with a brutal crackdown.
Nagarote, 42 kilometers northwest of Managua, saw hours of fiery exchanges between armed Ortega-backed forces and activists with mortars that resulted in at least one anti-government activist death, the local vicar Juan Lopez said.
Another death, the details of which remained unclear, occurred in Masatepe in similar street battles.
And in Tipitapa, 20 kilometers north of the capital, heavy clashes ensued when paramilitary gangs attempted to forcibly remove the blockades erected by activists.
Amid the confrontations that saw a bus set alight, hundreds of women took to the streets banging on “cazuela” clay pots, waving handkerchiefs and shouting at aggressors to “go away” — a tactic that ultimately worked, according to local footage.
