Anti-government protesters play cards on a highway during a national sit-in against President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, May 15, 2017.
The nationwide anti-government demonstrations launched 45 days ago have turned violent in some cases, with the toll now standing at 39 dead, hundreds injured and more than 2,000 people arrested.
A policeman was arrested for his alleged role in the killing of 33-year-old Luis Alviarez, a taxi driver who was shot in the thorax, in Palmira, Tachira state, on Monday. Videos of the violence in Tachira on Monday showed protesters throwing rocks and in one case setting an armored truck on fire.
Over the past few days, those acts were conducive to violent actions by groups that authorities have described as terrorists and vandals, whose actions resulted in about 40 people killed and more than 500 injured, in addition to huge material damage. More than three-dozen people have been killed, hundreds injured and as many as 2,000 detained in almost seven weeks of protests.
President Maduro has accused the leader of the opposition-led National Assembly, Julio Borges, of inciting violence by calling people on to the streets.
Venezuela, in spite of having the world's largest oil reserves, is also facing the worst economic crisis in its history with the population suffering severe food and medicine shortages amid triple-digit inflation.
The European Union has also called for elections in the country, in what is reported to be the union's most outspoken statement on the issue so far.
On Monday, the Organization of American States voted to hold a rare foreign ministers' meeting later this month to discuss the crisis.
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Venezuela announced in late April that it would be leaving the OAS, which seeks to defend democracy throughout the hemisphere, and its representative was not present at Monday's meeting. Demonstrators assembled a giant rosary with balloons hanging from a Caracas highway overpass. Maduro contends the OAS is meddling in Venezuela's domestic affairs, infringing on its sovereignty and trying to remove him from power.
The incident took place in central Barinas state, the birthplace of former president Hugo Chavez.
The crowd, including plenty of octogenarians plus a nun and one white-haired man dressed as Santa, sang Venezuela's national anthem in front of the security cordon.
"We are against this fraudulent process", Capriles said on his radio broadcast.
Attorney Gabriel Gallo stood with a group of farmers in the back of a green tractor during a protest on Tuesday in an agricultural area in northern Venezuela.
Grisly videos captured much of Monday's violence. More than three dozen people have been killed, including a national guardsman and a police officer.
Security forces used tear gas to disperse protesters on Saturday in the northern city of Valencia and soldiers blocked the procession from reaching its intended destination, Rappler reported. That brought the death toll since the start of the protests to at least 39 people.
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