Venezuela anti-government protests continue as death toll rises to 13

Updated

Anti-government demonstrators have put up barricades and set fire to rubbish in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, despite calls from within the opposition to rein in protests that have led to 13 deaths in the country's worst unrest for a decade.

Traffic in the capital slowed to a crawl and many people stayed home as protesters burned trash and piled debris along main avenues a day after opposition leader Henrique Capriles called on them to keep demonstrations peaceful.

"We know we're bothering people but we have to wake up Venezuela!" student Pablo Herrera, 23, said next to a barricade in the affluent Los Palos Grandes district of Caracas.

Authorities in the convulsed border state of Tachira confirmed another death, after a man fell from his second-storey apartment after being hit by a bullet from a nearby protest.

The demonstrations are the biggest challenge to president Nicolas Maduro's 10-month-old government, though there is no sign they could topple him or affect the OPEC member's oil shipments.

Venezuela is Latin America's biggest exporter of crude oil and has the world's largest petroleum reserves.

The government says 529 people have been charged over the unrest, with most given warnings but 45 kept behind bars.

Authorities say about 150 people have been injured.

Mr Capriles, 41, spurned an invitation to meet Mr Maduro in the afternoon as part of a gathering of mayors and governors that some had hoped would open up communications between both sides.

"This is a dying government ... I'm not going to be like the orchestra on the Titanic," he told reporters.

"Miraflores (presidential palace) is not the place to talk about peace, it's the centre of operations for abuses of human rights."

Mr Capriles and other opposition figureheads are demanding the government release imprisoned protest leader Leopoldo Lopez and about a dozen jailed student demonstrators.

They also want Mr Maduro to disarm pro-government gangs and address national issues ranging from crime to shortages of basic goods.

But hardline student protesters are demanding Mr Maduro step down, less than a year into his term.

"If there's one thing these violent protests have done, it's unite Chavismo," Mr Maduro told state television, using the term for government supporters coined during the 14-year rule of his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

The president, a 51-year-old former union activist who has made preserving Mr Chavez's legacy the centerpiece of his rule, accuses opponents of planning a coup backed by Washington.

Reuters

Topics: activism-and-lobbying, world-politics, unrest-conflict-and-war, venezuela

First posted