Venezuela strike erupts into violence leaving 2 dead

CARACAS, Venezuela — A nationwide strike against plans to rewrite the constitution shut down much of Venezuelan’s capital Thursday before erupting into sporadic violence that left at least two young men dead.

President Nicolas Maduro pledged to forge ahead with reshaping Venezuela’s government despite the protests and a U.S. threat to levy economic sanctions if he continued. A coalition of opposition groups called what it described as a “great march” for Saturday, returning to a strategy of direct confrontation with the government after a week of alternative tactics like organizing a nationwide protest vote against the constitutional rewrite.

In New York, a senior diplomat resigned from the Venezuelan delegation to the U.N. in what he called a protest of the Maduro’s administration’s widespread human rights violations.

U.N. Ambassador Rafael Ramirez said on Twitter that Minister Counselor Isaias Medina had acted dishonestly and been removed from his post.

In a video and a letter posted online, a man who identifies himself as Medina and says he was Venezuela’s representative to the General Assembly’s human rights committee announces his resignation and says he cannot be part of a government that attacks protesters, censors the media and detains political prisoners. The authenticity of the letter and video could not be independently confirmed, but the footage is consistent with prior photos of Medina.

Medina could not immediately be reached for comment by The Associated Press.

The issue is certain to be raised when Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada goes to U.N. headquarters in New York Friday to meet U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

In Caracas, wealthier, pro-opposition neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city were shuttered and silent until early afternoon, when improvised blockades left them almost entirely cut them off from the rest of the city. Groups of masked young men set fire to a handful of blockades and hurled stones at riot police, who fired back tear gas.

The chief prosecutor’s office said 23-year-old Andres Uzcategui was killed in a protest in the working-class neighborhood of La Isabelica in the central state of Carabobo and 24-year-old Ronney Eloy Tejera Soler was killed in the Los Teques neighborhood on Caracas’ outskirts. At least nine people were hurt in protests, the prosecutor’s office said. It offered no details about the circumstances of the killings.