This Sunday, government forces surrounded and raided the combative towns of Masaya, south of the capital, causing several injuries, according to a human rights organization.
Government troops stormed with mechanical shovels in the early hours to clear the barricades in the municipalities of Diría, Diriomo, Niquinohmo, and attacked residents who are entrenched.
They are going to destroy Masaya, it is absolutely surrounded,”
said the president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), Vilma Núñez.
We are being attacked by the National Police and hooded parapolice armed with AK-47 and machine guns to our indigenous neighborhood of Monimbó. We resist with homemade bombs and stones,”
said Álvaro Gómez, a resident of that neighborhood.
Monimbó, in the south of Masaya, has been the epicenter of the resistance against the government of Daniel Ortega in the wave of protests started on April 18th by students demanding the president to step down. Since then, the violence has left at least 272 dead, according to Cenidh.
The attack on the department of Masaya, 30 km south of Managua, comes a day after some 200 students were released thanks to the mediation of Catholic bishops after 20 hours entrenched in a parish before the siege of pro-government troops, who evicted them from the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN). This event left two dead students and about 14 injured.