Venezuela nightclub stampede leaves at least 17 people dead, including eight minors

At least 17 people have been killed in a stampede in a Caracas nightclub in Venezuela after a person activated a tear gas grenade inside, Venezuela's interior minister Nestor Reverol says.

More than 500 people were at a party at the Los Cotorros club in the middle-class El Paraiso neighbourhood when the device went off at about 3:00am during a fight between several people, causing a stampede towards the exits, Mr Reverol said on state TV.

Eleven people suffocated to death when the gas filled the club's confined space, said Noris Villanueva, an autopsy assistant at the local Perez Carreno Hospital, who examined their bodies. It was not clear how the other six died.

Eight of those who died were younger than 18, Mr Reverol said, and five people were injured.

Mr Reverol said authorities had arrested seven people and the investigation was ongoing.

"The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, led by President Nicolas Maduro, deplores this unfortunate event," he said.

"We send our condolences to the families."

The club, a two-storey red brick building, was empty later on Saturday morning (local time) and there was no police presence outside.

He only knew his 19-year-old son Luis had died because he had seen him in the morgue. Another son of his had been hospitalised.

Homicide rates in Venezuela have shot up during the country's spiral into economic crisis and political meltdown and many Caracas residents refuse to go out at night due to security fears.

There were almost 27,000 violent deaths last year, making Venezuela proportionally the world's second most murderous nation after El Salvador, according to a local crime monitoring group.

The homicide rate in Caracas alone was 104 per 100,000 people, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence said.

Authorities say non-governmental groups inflate figures to create paranoia and tarnish Maduro's socialist Government. </s> At least four people have died following overnight clashes ahead of Wednesday's rival protests in Venezuela by supporters and opponents of President Nicolas Maduro, police and non-governmental organizations said.

A 16-year-old was among the dead having suffered "a firearm injury during a demonstration" in the capital Caracas, the Social Conflict Observatory said.

The other three deaths were registered in the southern state of Bolivar.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) </s> Students held demonstrations across Caracas today as a two-month-old protest movement that shows no signs of letting up claimed more lives. At the Central University of Venezuela, soldiers bathed hundreds of student protesters in tear gas. Many of the protesters stayed put, and medics in gas masks attended to others with bloodied faces and limbs.

Students from another university marched peacefully to deliver a petition to the office of the country’s Catholic bishops, asking the Pope to speak out against the violence and the government’s steps toward authoritarianism.

Gunfire erupted at a student gathering in El Tigre, a city southeast of Caracas, leaving Juan Lopez, 33, dead and three others injured, according to the chief prosecutor’s office.

According to preliminary reports, an assailant fired at Lopez toward the end of the meeting and then fled on a motorcycle. Lopez was the president of a university federation. The student leader’s death brought the number of people killed in Venezuela’s ongoing political turmoil to at least 37.

Earlier today, authorities announced that a 38-year-old police officer in the central state of Carabobo had died of his injuries after being shot during a Wednesday protest that had hundreds of thousands of people on the street nationwide. A 17 year-old was also killed during the day’s protests.

Hundreds more have been wounded – no small matter in a country with crippling medical shortages. And more than 1,000 have been arrested.

Protesters are demanding immediate presidential elections. President Nicolas Maduro accuses the opposition of attempting a coup, and has responded with an initiative to rewrite the constitution.

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A student is killed amid gunfire in El Tigre, raising the death toll in protests against Nicolás Maduro's government to at least 37 in the past month.