Bolivian security forces said they thwarted an assassination plot against President Evo Morales on Thursday, killing three people in a half-hour shootout in the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz.
Police chief Hugo Escobar said two Hungarians and a Bolivian, who were believed to be part of a conspiracy to kill Morales, were killed in the gunfight at a hotel in the eastern Bolivian city.
Morales, a socialist, is Bolivia’s first indigenous president and has faced strong opposition in relatively wealthy regions of the country, including Santa Cruz. The governor of Santa Cruz, a prominent critic of Morales, voiced skepticism about the government’s account.
Speaking later on Thursday during a visit to Venezuela, Morales, who was not in Santa Cruz at the time of the incident shortly after midnight, said an Irish person may have been among what he called foreign mercenaries involved in the suspected plot.
Government officials said authorities had recently been following the suspects.
“Yesterday I gave instructions to the vice president to move to arrest these mercenaries and this morning I was informed of a half-hour shootout at a hotel in the city of Santa Cruz,” Morales said, adding two people were under arrest.
There was confusion regarding the nationalities of the foreigners killed. While the chief of police said two of those killed were from Hungary, several local media organizations reported they were from Romania and Ireland.
In La Paz, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia told reporters the men were carrying guns and grenades and attacked police as they approached them.
He said that after the shootout, police found documents “about preparations for an assassination, an attempt on the lives of the president and the vice president” and confiscated sniper rifles, high-caliber guns and other explosives from a nearby building.
Heavily armed police cordoned off the hotel where the gunfight occurred.
Morales has announced several plots against him in the past, but the results of investigations have never been released, causing some Bolivians to doubt their veracity.
Santa Cruz Governor Ruben Costas, who has clashed with Morales in the past, said he doubted the government’s version of events.
“This has been cheaply staged, this is a show,” he told reporters.
Last year, right-wing opposition groups launched violent protests against a referendum promoted by Morales that gives more power to the indigenous majority.
Morales expelled the US ambassador to Bolivia in September, accusing him of encouraging the protests in a bid to oust him.
The president ended a five-day hunger strike on Tuesday after lawmakers passed an electoral law that creates more seats in indigenous areas where his support is strongest. Morales had stopped eating to pressure legislators to pass the law.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS