The death toll in 24 hours of bloody anti-government protests in Bolivia rose to 20 today after two looters were shot dead near the capital, La Paz.
Demonstrators skirmished with soldiers in La Paz as thousands took to the streets across this impoverished nation for union-led marches and a 24-hour strike to demand that new President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada step down.
This week's clashes were the latest in a series of violent protests against the policies of the 72-year-old president, one of Washington's key anti-drug trafficking allies.
Smoke was still rising from the embers of the deputy presidency and social development ministry, gutted when anti-government protesters marauded through the historic city centre last night, torching public buildings. Most of the city's 10,000 police were still holed up in their quarters after a deadly shoot-out with soldiers on the doorstep of the presidential palace on Thursday, when a police wage protest spiraled out of control.
Tanks have now been posted nearby.
The two new deaths occurred when soldiers opened fire on a group of looters in the city of El Alto near La Paz as they were raiding a local government building, customs warehouse and dozens of small shops, a journalist at a local newspaper said.
They followed on the heel of 18 deaths the government confirmed yesterday when soldiers opened fire at protesting police after tear gas canisters were fired at them. Bolivia's police and army have been locked in a bitter feud ever since a popular revolt 50 years ago, when the police helped miners and the public to defeat the army in street battles and overthrow the government.
Mr Sanchez de Lozada was forced to scrap hated income tax measures, designed to slash the fiscal deficit to win International Monetary Fund aid, in a bid to defuse welling social tensions and he decreed a national holiday for Thursday. He ignored calls to stand down.