Two dead in Venezuela as protests against Maduro government drag on

A Venezuelan National Guardsman and a motorcyclist were killed in a standoff with opposition demonstrators who had set up a barricade along an avenue of Caracas, the vice president of the ruling Socialist Party said Thursday, as protesters continued month-long rallies against President Nicolás Maduro.

Troops were called in to the neighborhood of Los Ruices in eastern Caracas on Thursday and used tear gas and water cannons to disperse several hundred demonstrators who had set up a barrier along a well-trafficked avenue.

"We have learned that a motorcycle driver was killed by a sniper," said National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello. "And a member of the National Guard was also killed in the same place by a sniper."

Cabello identified the guardsman as 25-year-old Acner Isaac López Lyon and said that motorcycle taxi driver Jose Gregorio Amaris was also killed while removing debris from the road.

In a televised speech Thursday, attended by actor Danny Glover, at a new government apartment building, Maduro said the motorcyclist was removing debris so he could go about his job. After he was shot, the National Guard arrived to secure the area and López Lyon was killed.

"Where are the opposition politicians to condemn these events, to search for peace like we're searching?" Maduro asked. He called those building the barricades "vandals who hate the people."

Just before the deaths were announced, the country's chief prosecutor said the death toll from the protests stood at 19 after weeks of student-led protests.

Demonstrators demanding the resignation of President Maduro have for weeks been staging rallies and setting up barricades, leading to clashes with security forces and government supporters.

Maduro on Wednesday called on pro-government organizations known as "colectivos," which opposition leaders describe as paramilitary groups, to break apart barricades that protesters have set up in primarily affluent neighborhoods.

Those demonstrations have brought Venezuela's worst unrest in a decade. Street protests helped briefly topple the late socialist leader Hugo Chávez in botched 2002 coup. Yet there seems to be little chance of a change of the current government, given that the protests have remained relatively small and the military appears to remain behind Maduro. 

On Thursday United Nations human rights experts demanded answers from Venezuela's government about the use of violence and imprisonment in a crackdown on demonstrations.

Six experts with the U.N.'s top human rights body wrote to the Maduro administration about allegations of protesters being beaten and in some cases tortured by security forces and taken to military facilities, cut off from communication and denied legal help, U.N. officials said.

"The recent violence amid protests in Venezuela need to be urgently and thoroughly investigated, and perpetrators must be held accountable," the experts said in a joint statement.

Venezuela's U.N. Mission in Geneva dismissed the experts' request for answers as an unfortunate echo of what they described as an international disinformation campaign to undermine their government.

On Monday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and defended the government's actions before the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Jaua said 18 people had died in the student-led protests and 73 people remained in custody, "and only in three cases is it believed that this is due to illegal acts by police and which need to be brought to trial."

Ban told reporters that he urged Venezuelan authorities to respond to the protests with dialogue, not violence.

Wire services