Deadly Venezuelan protests continue

Supporters of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez held a vigil outside his prison demanding to see him on Thursday after rumors about his health rattled the protest-hit country where the death toll from anti-government unrest rose to 36, Reuters reports.

Lopez’s wife and mother rushed to a military hospital in Caracas and then the hilltop Ramo Verde jail overnight, after a journalist tweeted Lopez had been taken to a medical center without vital signs. President Nicolas Maduro’s leftist government, facing a wave of major opposition protests since last month, later issued a short “proof of life” video in which Lopez said he was fine.

Lopez is Venezuela’s most prominent imprisoned politician, and U.S. President Donald Trump in February called for his release after a White House meeting with Tintori. The government says he is a dangerous agitator, pointing to his involvement in a brief 2002 coup against the late Hugo Chavez, when Lopez even helped arrest a Cabinet minister.

Over 1,700 people have been arrested, with 597 of them still jailed, since the unrest began in early April, according to rights group Penal Forum. The death toll in violent Venezuela’s month of unrest has been creeping up, reaching at least 36 after two latest cases. A 38-year-old policeman in Carabobo state, Gerardo Barrera, died overnight after being shot during a protest, the public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

Juan Lopez, a 33-year old president of a student federation at a university in the western Anzoategui state, was gunned down during a student assembly on Thursday, the public prosecutor’s office added. A member of the public approached him, shot him several times, and then fled on a motorcycle.