Sniper fire during Venezuelan curfew

Press, 4 March 1989, Page 10

Sniper fire during Venezuelan curfew

By

KATHERINE KING

of Reuters in Caracas

Army troops in Caracas trying to quell disturbances sparked by price increases were fired on by snipers on Thursday while patrolling slum neighbourhoods on the fourth day of violence in Venezuela that has killed up to 200 people.

After a helicopter tour of parts of the capital, President Carlos Andres Perez pledged to maintain the austerity programmes that provoked the riots. “We have to continue the measures we have proposed to get Venezuela out of economic insecurity, out of that fiction which we have been living,” he said. Up to 17 Venezuelan cities have been affected by the riots, which exploded when bus fares went up 30 per cent on Monday, a day after a 90

per cent increase in i petrol prices. 1 Shortly after taking i office last month Mr 1 Perez introduced austerity < measures and cut sub- t sidies in an effort to meet ; International Monetary Fund loan conditions. < The unrest, the worst i violence in 30 years of 1 democracy, comes as ! Venezuela wrestles with a i sUS32billion foreign debt ; and an economic crisis 1 that has eroded living i standards after years of 1 oil-driven prosperity. The capital was under a 1 6 p.m. curfew on Thurs- t

day night. About 10,000 troops have been flown to Caracas to reinforce soldiers patrolling the capital and providing security to banks and grocery stores. The Defence Ministry confirmed on Thursday night that an Army major, Felipe Acosta Carles, was shot dead by what a spokesman called “an armed mob of bandits” in the poor El Valle hillside neighbourhood on Wednesday night. The spokesman said Major Acosta Carles and about 20 other soldiers

were patrolling El Valle when they encountered about 50 men, some with weapons. Major Acosta Carles tried to persuade them to lay down their arms and “they surprised him suddenly with a shot to the chest,” the spokesman said. On Thursday, in a neighbourhood just a few blocks from the presidential palace, about 15 soldiers backed by armoured personnel carriers encountered sniper fire from a highrise block of flats about 250 metre? away.