Tag Archives: Famine

Somalia says 110 dead in last 48 hours due to drought

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Some 110 people have died in southern Somalia in the last two days from famine and diarrhea resulting from a drought, the prime minister said on Saturday, as the area braces itself for widespread shortages of food.

In February, United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said the drought in Somalia could lead to up to 270,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition this year.

“It is a difficult situation for the pastoralists and their livestock. Some people have been hit by famine and diarrhea at the same time. In the last 48 hours 110 people died due to famine and diarrhea in Bay region,” Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire’s office said in a statement.

“The Somali government will do its best, and we urge all Somalis wherever they are to help and save the dying Somalis,” he said in the statement released after a meeting of a famine response committee.

In 2011, some 260,000 people starved to death due to famine in Somalia.

The country also continues to be rocked by security problems, with the capital Mogadishu and other regions controlled by the federal government coming under regular attack from al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab.

(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

U.N. says tide of refugees from South Sudan rising fast

An aerial photograph showing South Sudanese refugees at Bidi Bidi refugeeís resettlement camp near the border with South Sudan, in Yumbe district, northern Uganda December 7, 2016. REUTERS/James Akena/File Photo

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Some 1.5 million refugees have fled fighting and famine in South Sudan to neighboring countries, half of them to Uganda, and thousands more are leaving daily, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday.

Political rivalry between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar ignited a civil war in 2013 that has often followed ethnic lines.

The two signed a shaky peace deal in 2015, but fighting has continued and Machar fled in July after days of clashes between soldiers loyal to him and Kiir’s forces in the capital Juba. He is now in South Africa.

Charlie Yaxley, spokesman for the UNHCR in Uganda, said the agency estimated the total number of South Sudanese who have gone to neighboring countries at 1.5 million, half in Uganda.

In December there were an estimated 600,000 South Sudanese who had arrived in Uganda.

Yaxley said there were thousands of new arrivals every day. The UNHCR had planned for 300,000 this year.

“We have already in the first two months of this year received 120,00 new arrivals. If this rate of inflow continues actually that figure for 2017 will be far higher,” Yaxley said.

Refugees arriving in Uganda often say they are fleeing from ethnic violence.

“I was in Invepi … and almost every refugee I spoke to had either seen a friend or family member killed in front of their eyes,” Yaxley said, referring to the latest refugee settlement set up in Uganda.

Violence has prevented many farmers from harvesting crops and the scarcity of food has been compounded by hyperinflation, triggering famine in parts of South Sudan.

The UNHCR says the refugee crisis is the world’s third largest after Syria’s and Afghanistan’s.

(Editing by George Obulutsa and Andrew Roche)

U.N. urges aid access to Yemen ports to avert looming famine

A woman sits with her children near their tent at a camp for internally displaced people in Dharawan, near the capital Sanaa, Yemen February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

DUBAI (Reuters) – A United Nations aid official visiting both sides in Yemen’s civil war has urged them to guarantee more access to the country’s ports to let food, fuel and medicine imports in to ward off a looming famine.

Emergency relief coordinator Stephen O’Brien said the U.N. was urging international donors to step up their aid but the Yemenis had to ensure it could reach up to seven million people now facing severe food shortages.

Yemen has been divided by nearly two years of civil war that pits the Iran-allied Houthi group against a Western-backed coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

Nearly 3.3 million people in Yemen – including 2.1 million children – are acutely malnourished, the U.N. says. They include 460,000 children under age of five with the worst form of malnutrition, who risk dying of pneumonia or diarrhea.

Fighting in or near ports hampers access for aid coming from outside.

“The international community needs to step up its funding and the parties to the conflict need to continue providing humanitarian access,” O’Brien told reporters at the government’s base in Aden late on Monday.

“This also means access to the ports so that the needed imports can enter Yemen,” he said.

Earlier this month, the U.N. said Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, which serves territory controlled by the Houthis, had hampered humanitarian operations to import vital food and fuel supplies.

Five cranes at the port have been destroyed, forcing dozens of ships to lie offshore because they cannot be unloaded.

“Seven million people don’t know where their next meal is coming from and we now face a serious risk of famine,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien has also met with the Houthi movement in the capital Sanaa. On Tuesday, he was planning to visit the flashpoint city of Taiz but his convoy returned from its gates because of security concerns, a U.N. source told Reuters.

Robert Mardini, regional director at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), voiced concern at the fate of 500,000 people in the port city of Hodeidah as the conflict moves north up the Red Sea coast.

The “lifeline” of aid moving through Hodeidah and other ports is starting to be cut, Mardini told reporters in Geneva. “In terms of reserves, there are reserves for two, three or four months, I don’t know. But there is an urgent need for re-supply, this is what we can say.”

U.N. has appealed for $2.1 billion to provide food and other life-saving aid, saying that Yemen’s economy and institutions are collapsing and its infrastructure has been devastated.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last week only $90 million of funding has been received so far, out of $5.6 billion needed this year for humanitarian operations in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

(Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi, additionnal reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Tens of thousands flood into Sudan from famine-hit South Sudan

A woman waits to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – More than 31,000 South Sudanese refugees – mostly women and children – have crossed the border into Sudan this year, fleeing famine and conflict, the United Nations refugee agency said on Monday.

The United Nations declared famine last week in parts of South Sudan’s Unity State, with about 5.5 million people expected to have no reliable source of food by July.

“Initial expectations were that 60,000 refugees may arrive through 2017, but in the first two months alone, over 31,000 refugees arrived,” a statement from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Khartoum said.

More than a million people have fled South Sudan since a civil war erupted in 2013 after President Salva Kiir’ fired Vice President Riek Machar. Fighting between government forces and Machar-led rebels has caused the largest mass exodus of any conflict in central Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Women and children wait to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan,

Women and children wait to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan, February 26, 2017. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Some 328,339 South Sudanese refugees have sought refuge in Sudan, including about 131,000 in 2016, many exhausted, malnourished and ill, having walked for days. More than 80 percent of the latest arrivals were women and children.

The fighting has uprooted more than 3 million people and the U.N. says continuing displacement presented “heightened risks of prolonged (food) underproduction into 2018”. In the fighting, food warehouses have been looted and aid workers killed.

South Sudan is rich in oil resources. But, six years after independence from neighbouring Sudan, there are only 200 km (120 miles) of paved roads in a nation with an area of 619,745 square km (239,285 square miles).

(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Millions risk starvation in Nigeria, Lake Chad region: United Nations

Children attend a class at a primary school in Muna Garage IDP camp, Maiduguri, Nigeria November 7, 2016. UNICEF/Naftalin/Handout via REUTERS

By Gwladys Fouche

OSLO (Reuters) – More than seven million people risk starvation in Nigeria’s insurgency-hit northeastern region and around Lake Chad, a senior U.N. official said on Wednesday ahead of a new funding appeal.

Famine has been ongoing since last year in parts of Nigeria where the government is fighting a seven-year long Boko Haram insurgency.

An international donor conference in Oslo on Friday will aim to raise a chunk of the $1.5 billion the United Nations says it needs to address deepening food insecurity in the region this year.

“They are living on the edge, barely getting by on one meal a day,” Toby Lanzer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, told Reuters. “My biggest concern today is starvation.”

Earlier this week the United Nations said 1.4 million children were at risk of “imminent death” in famines in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

Lanzer said he was worried the Boko Haram insurgency would deter farmers from planting their crops after missing the last three planting seasons, and that the number of lives at risk could increase. He also expressed concerns the coming rainy season could harm vulnerable people.

“Hungry people without shelter when it rains die,” he said.

Lanzer said the humanitarian response needed to go beyond food aid and include seeds, tools and fishing nets.

Lanzer said he hoped a total $500 million will have been pledged by the end of February, including this week’s funding round.

Lanzer, who has also worked in South Sudan, Darfur and Chechnya, said it was difficult to estimate how many people would die from hunger in the next few months.

“If we were to lose another planting season, I dread to think how severe the crisis could get,” he said.

Some 10.7 million people in northeastern Nigeria and around Lake Chad — roughly two in every three people — need humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.

Boko Haram militants have killed about 15,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes, and still launch deadly attacks despite having been pushed out of the vast swathes of territory they controlled in 2014.

Lanzer cautioned that failure to address the deteriorating situation could encourage more Africans to try and flee to Europe.

(Editing by Richard Lough)

Brazil races against time to save drought-hit city, dying crops

cracked ground in Brazil

By Anthony Boadle

CAMPINA GRANDE, Brazil (Reuters) – The shrunken carcasses of cows lie in scorched fields outside the city of Campina Grande in northeast Brazil, and hungry goats search for food on the cracked-earth floor of the Boqueirao reservoir that serves the desperate town.

After five years of drought, farmer Edivaldo Brito says he cannot remember when the Boqueirão reservoir was last full. But he has never seen it this empty.

“We’ve lost everything: bananas, beans, potatoes,” Brito said. “We have to walk 3 kilometers just to wash clothes.”

Brazil’s arid northeast is weathering its worst drought on record and Campina Grande, which has 400,000 residents that depend on the reservoir, is running out of water.

After two years of rationing, residents complain that water from the reservoir is dirty, smelly and undrinkable. Those who can afford to do so buy bottled water to cook, wash their teeth with, and even to give their pets.

The reservoir is down to 4 percent of capacity and rainfall is expected to be sparse this year.

“If it does not fill up, the city’s water system will collapse by mid-year,” says Janiro Costa Rêgo, an expert on water resources and hydraulics professor at Campina Grande’s federal university. “It would be a holocaust. You would have to evacuate the city.”

Brazil’s government says help is on the way.

REROUTING THE RIVER

After decades of promises and years of delays, the government says the rerouting of Brazil’s longest river, the São Francisco, will soon relieve Campina Grande and desperate farmers in four parched northeastern states.

Water will be pumped over hills and through 400 kilometers of canals into dry river basins in Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, and Paraíba, the small state of which Campina Grande is the second-biggest city.

Begun in 2005 by leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the project has been delayed by political squabbles, corruption and cost-overruns of billions of dollars.

Brazil’s ongoing recession, which economists calculate has shrunk the economy of the impoverished northeast by over four percent during each of the past two years, made things even worse.

Now, President Michel Temer is speeding up completion of the project, perhaps his best opportunity to boost support for his unpopular government in a region long-dominated by native-son Lula and his leftist Workers Party.

In early March, Temer plans to open a canal that will feed Campina Grande’s reservoir at the town of Monteiro. The water will still take weeks to flow down the dry bed of the Paraíba river to Boqueirão.

With the quality of water in Campina Grande dropping by the day, it is a race against time.

Professor Costa Rêgo says the reservoir water will become untreatable by March and could harm residents who cannot afford bottled water.

Helder Barbalho, Temer’s minister in charge of the project, says the government is confident the water will arrive on schedule.

“We have to deliver the water by April at all costs,” he said.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change has worsened the droughts in Brazil’s northeast over the last 30 years, according to Eduardo Martins, head of Funceme, Ceará state’s meteorological agency.

Rainfall has decreased and temperatures have risen, increasing demand for agricultural irrigation just as water supplies fell and evaporation accelerated.

Costa Rêgo blames lack of planning by Brazil’s governments for persistent and repeated water crises, shocking for a country that boasts the biggest fresh water reserves on the planet.

The reservoir supplying São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and a metropolitan region of 20 million people, nearly dried up in 2015. The capital, Brasilia, resorted to rationing this year.

In Fortaleza, capital of Ceará and the northeast’s second largest city, the vital Castanhão reservoir is down to 5 percent of its capacity.

While that city will also get water from the São Francisco project, it will not arrive until at least year-end because contractor Mendes Junior abandoned work after being implicated in a major corruption scandal.

“Water from the São Francisco river is vital,” Ceará Governor Camilo Santana told Reuters. He said the reservoir can supply Ceará only until August.

After that, the state must use emergency wells and a mandatory 20 percent reduction in consumption to keep Fortaleza taps running until water arrives.

RATIONING

Ceará has had to cut back on irrigation, hurting flower and melon exporters, cattle ranchers and dairy farmers. They stand to flourish when the transfer comes through, but quenching the thirst of the cities will take priority.

In Campina Grande, a textile center, companies including industry leaders Coteminas and Alpargatas have curtailed expansion plans and drastically cut back consumption by recycling the water they use.

There, too, new water will first go towards solving the crisis in Campina Grande and surrounding towns. Only then will officials think about agriculture.

“First we have to satisfy the thirst of urban consumers. Only then can we think of producing wealth,” said Joao Fernandes da Silva, the top water management official in Paraíba.

Rationing has particularly hurt poorer urban families. Many have no running water or water tanks and instead store water in plastic bottles.

For those who have waited decades for the São Francisco transfer, they will believe it only when they see the water flow.

Brito said he and his neighbors survive on the social programs that were the hallmark of Lula and his Workers Party administration. Though tainted by corruption allegations, Lula remains Brazil’s most popular politician ahead of presidential elections next year.

“Without the Bolsa Familia program, we would be dying of hunger,” said Brito, who believes shortages could persist even after the river transfer. “It’s political season again, so they promise us water, just for our votes.”

(Additional reporting by Ueslei Marcelino and Sergio Queiroz; Editing by Paulo Prada, Daniel Flynn and Bernadette Baum)

U.N. seeks $2.1 billion to avert famine in Yemen

girls stand at the entrace of tent in yemen

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $2.1 billion to provide food and other life-saving assistance to 12 million people in Yemen who face the threat of famine after two years of war.

“The situation in Yemen is catastrophic and rapidly deteriorating,” Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in the appeal document.

“Nearly 3.3 million people – including 2.1 million children – are acutely malnourished.”

Yemen has been divided by nearly two years of civil war that pits the Iran-allied Houthi group against a Sunni Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia. At least 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which has unleashed a humanitarian crisis in the desperately poor Arabian Peninsula country.

In all, nearly 19 million Yemenis – more than two-thirds of the population – need assistance and protection, the U.N. said.

“Ongoing air strikes and fighting continue to inflict heavy casualties, damage public and private infrastructure, and impede delivery of humanitarian assistance,” it said.

“The Yemeni economy is being wilfully destroyed,” it added, saying that ports, roads, bridges, factories and markets have been hit.

An estimated 63,000 Yemeni children died last year of preventable causes often linked to malnutrition, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said last week.

“In Yemen, if bombs don’t kill you, a slow and painful death by starvation is now an increasing threat,” Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a separate statement as the U.N. plan was launched.

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia entered Yemen’s civil war in March 2015 to try to reinstate President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after he was ousted from the capital Sanaa by the tribal Houthis, who are fighting in an alliance with troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The United States has sent the Navy destroyer USS Cole to patrol off Yemen’s coast to protect waterways from Houthi militia aligned with Iran, U.S. officials last week, amid rising tension between Washington and Tehran.

Oxfam accused Britain and other powers backing the Saudi-led coalition of “political complicity” in the Yemen conflict.

“The UK Government’s calculated complicity risks accelerating Yemen toward a famine, putting millions of lives at risk and making a mockery of their global obligations to those in peril,” Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Tom Heneghan)

Yemen war erases decade of health gains, many children starving: UNICEF

UNICEF logo

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Yemen has lost a decade’s worth of gains in public health as a result of war and economic crisis, with increasing numbers of children succumbing to malnutrition, the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

An estimated 3.3 million people, including 2.2 million children, across the Arab peninsula’s poorest country are suffering from acute malnutrition, and 460,000 under the age of five have severe acute malnutrition, the agency said.

The most severe form leaves young children vulnerable to life-threatening diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections.

“What worries us is the severe acute malnutrition because it is killing children,” Meritxell Relano, UNICEF representative in Yemen, told Reuters in Geneva.

“Because of the crumbling health system, the conflict and economic crisis, we have gone back to 10 years ago. A decade has been lost in health gains,” she said, with 63 out of every 1,000 live births now dying before their fifth birthday, against 53 children in 2014.

Children and pregnant and lactating women are most heavily affected by the malnutrition crisis in the northern province of Saada, in the coastal area of Hodeida and in Taiz in the south, she said.

UNICEF mobile teams aim to screen more children and reach 323,000 severely malnourished children this year, up from 237,000 last year, Relano said, adding that partner agencies would target the rest.

The Yemeni conflict, which pits a Saudi-led Arab coalition against the Iran-allied Houthi movement, has left more than half of the country’s 28 million people “food insecure”, with seven million of them enduring hunger, the United Nations has said.

Jamie McGoldrick, the top U.N. aid official in the country, told Reuters on Friday that Yemen has roughly three months’ supply of wheat left to draw from, leaving the country exposed to serious disruption as a central bank crisis cuts food imports and starvation deepens.

Relano said UNICEF had made progress in delivering supplies of energy-rich foods for severely malnourished children.

“We managed to bring supplies into the country. We have 50 percent in the country secured for this year,” she said.

UNICEF is seeking $236.5 million for Yemen this year, as part of its overall appeal of $3.3 billion to help women and children in 48 countries.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Unpaid state salaries deepen economic pain in Yemen’s war

public workers crowd post office to receive salaries

By Noah Browning

DUBAI (Reuters) – Already suffering grievously under nearly two years of civil war, many thousands of Yemeni state workers now face destitution as their salaries have gone largely unpaid for months.

The immediate reason is a decision by the internationally-recognized government to shift Yemen’s central bank out of Sanaa, the capital city controlled by the armed Houthi movement with which it is at war.

Underlying the bank’s move to Aden, the southern port where the government is based, is a struggle for legitimacy between the two sides. The result is to deepen economic hardship when four-fifths of Yemen’s 28 million people already need some form of humanitarian aid, according to U.N. estimates.

“I sold everything I have to cover the rent and the price of the children’s school and food. I have nothing left to sell,” said Ashraf Abdullah, 38, a government employee in Sanaa.

“Salaries have become a playing card in the war, and no one cares about the fate of the people who die of starvation every day,” the father of two told Reuters.

At least 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting while millions face poverty and starvation. Saudi Arabia intervened in March 2015 to back President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthis, who are aligned to Riyadh’s regional rival Iran, pushed him out of Sanaa.

The administration in Aden says it had to move the bank in August because the Houthis had looted the funds to pay soldiers and fighters waging war against it – a charge the group denies.

It has promised to pay salaries to public servants even in the main population centers which are mostly in Houthi hands. Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher said it had sent off a payment on Wednesday but banking sources say this covers only December, and four months of wages remain unpaid for most employees.

The crisis has affected tens of thousands of employees in Sanaa alone, a source in the Civil Services ministry said.

It is unclear how many of the 250,000 employees registered nationwide before the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 have received incomplete salaries – as a large proportion in government-held areas have been paid.

Nor is the number of public workers appointed by the Houthis after their rise to power, estimated in the tens of thousands.

The government denies it is trying to undermine support for the Houthis – whom it calls “coup militia” – by impoverishing state workers living under their rule. Instead, it accuses the Houthis of obstructing the payments and insists they be the ones to disburse the funds.

“The coup militia … (is) refusing to hand over lists of employees’ salaries in institutions and government agencies in the capital Sanaa and the provinces they control,” government news agency SABA quoted an official as saying.

(For a graphic on battle for control in Yemen, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2jV4tDI)

NATIONAL AUTHORITY

While the Houthis still control the main towns and cities in the north and west, they have steadily lost ground to government troops backed up by thousands of Gulf Arab air strikes.

Still, the government struggles to extend its influence over the land it nominally rules. It also faces a southern secessionist movement, restive tribes and Islamic militants, while many services such as electricity and water are scarce.

In the struggle for legitimacy, both sides appear keen to deprive the other of any mantle of truly national authority which paying salaries across the battle lines would confer.

Current and retired soldiers demanding their dues have even regularly demonstrated in Aden’s streets in recent days, suggesting the non-payments may not be strictly political.

Diplomats and analysts worry about the consequences of transferring the bank away from its veteran staff in Sanaa.

“The new central bank in Aden remains unequipped – on the basis of manpower alone – to handle the duties that its predecessor institution did,” said Adam Baron, a Yemen expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The new bank denies this and says it is committed to working impartially and overcoming wartime confusion to do its job.

Meanwhile, many Yemenis can no longer wait for a solution.

“This is our fifth month without a salary, and we live by borrowing from the corner store, but now they are refusing to give us anything are calling in their debt, said Abdullah Ahmed, 50, a soldier in the interior ministry. “The landlord is demanding rent for the apartment … we’re dying, not living. Every door is being closed in our faces.”

(Editing by Tom Finn and David Stamp)

Venezuela’s opposition revives push to end Maduro’s rule

Protesters in Venezuela hold sign that reads "Let us vote"

By Diego Oré and Anggy Polanco

CARACAS/SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (Reuters) – Offering prized bags of flour to police and hurling empty medicine boxes on the floor, Venezuelan opposition protesters launched a new push on Monday to force President Nicolas Maduro from power and end 18 years of socialist rule.

Turnout for the opposition’s first rallies of 2017 was not massive, reflecting disillusionment over last year’s failure to bring about a referendum to recall the 54-year-old leader and successor to Hugo Chavez.

But those who did march in a string of rallies around the country turned creative in their complaints about the South American OPEC nation’s unprecedented economic crisis.

In the politically volatile western state of Tachira, long a hotbed of anti-Maduro sentiment, some demonstrators proffered flour – an increasingly scarce and expensive commodity during the nation’s three-year recession – to police, witnesses said.

In Caracas, where several thousand opposition supporters marched, some threw empty medicine cartons on the floor to symbolize shortages afflicting the health sector.

Security forces fired teargas in Tachira to stop protesters from reaching an office of the National Election Council, while in Caracas they used tear gas against people blocking a highway.

With many of Venezuela’s 30 million people skipping meals, unable to pay soaring prices for basic goods and facing long lines for scarce subsidized products, Maduro, who won a 2013 election to succeed Chavez, has become deeply unpopular.

Polls showed a majority of Venezuelans wanted a referendum last year which could have brought his rule to an early end and sparked a presidential vote. But compliant courts and election authorities thwarted the move, alleging fraud in signature collections.

“This government is scared of votes, and the election council is the instrument they use to avoid them,” said housewife Zoraida Castro, 46, during a march to the election council’s office in southern Ciudad Bolivar city.

The opposition Democratic Unity coalition is demanding dates for regional elections that are supposed to happen this year, and also urging Maduro to hold a new presidential ballot.

“It’s a day of struggle in Venezuela,” said coalition secretary general Jesus Torrealba, in Barquisimeto town to show solidarity with a Catholic archbishop whose residence was recently attacked after he criticized the government.

Maduro’s six-year term is due to end in early 2019.

Red-shirted government supporters, who accuse the opposition of seeking a coup with U.S. connivance, were also marching on Monday, a politically significant day for Venezuelans: the anniversary of the 1958 fall of dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez.

They gathered at the National Pantheon building to honor leftist guerrilla Fabricio Ojeda, who was murdered in 1966.

(Additional reporting by German Dam in Ciudad Bolivar, Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Alexandra Ulmer and Paul Simao)