Reuters/Caracas

Venezuelan security forces and demonstrators yesterday faced off in streets blocked by burning barricades in several cities in an escalation of protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government, witnesses said.
At least five people have died since the unrest turned violent last week, with scores of injuries and arrests.
The demonstrators, mainly students, blame the government for violent crime, high inflation, product shortages and alleged repression of opponents.
In affluent east Caracas overnight, security forces fired teargas and bullets, chasing youths who threw Molotov cocktails and blocked streets with burning trash, witnesses said.
Residents in middle-class neighbourhoods banged pots and pans at windows in a traditional form of protest, and demonstrators were out again from early yesterday.
“I declare myself in civil disobedience,” read one banner held up by demonstrators spread across a Caracas road.
There were similar scenes in the western Andean states of Tachira and Merida that have been especially volatile since hardline opposition leaders called supporters onto the streets in early February demanding Maduro’s departure.
In San Cristobal city, which some residents are describing as a “war zone”, many businesses remained shut as students and police faced off in the streets again yesterday.
Maduro said “special measures” would be taken to restore order in Tachira. “We won’t let them turn it into a Benghazi,” he said, referring to the violence-wracked Libyan city.
Tensions have escalated since opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, a 42-year-old Harvard-educated economist, turned himself in to troops this week. He is being held in Caracas’ Ramo Verde jail and faces charges of fomenting the violence.
“Change depends on every one of us. Don’t give up!” Lopez’s wife Lilian Tintori said via Twitter yesterday.
Local TV channels are providing almost no live coverage of the unrest, so Venezuelans are turning to social media to swap information and images, though falsified photos are circulating.
Both sides rolled out competing evidence of the latest violence yesterday, with ruling Socialist Party governors showing photos and video of charred streets and torched vehicles, while the opposition posted footage of brutal behaviour which they said was by national guard troops.
Caracas was calmer by lunchtime yesterday. There was a little less traffic than normal, and most people appeared to have returned to work. But the events of the night were on everyone’s lips.
Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli said via his Twitter account yesterday that the country was calling in its ambassador for consultations, adding “We deplore the violent situation that our brother country is going through.”
Speaking in Mexico, US President Barack Obama criticised Maduro’s government for arresting protesters and urged it to focus on addressing the “legitimate grievances” of its people.