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Argentine demonstrators gather at the Plaza de Mayo square to demand the resignation of President Fernando De la Rua.
Photo:REUTERS
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Argentine protesters clamored for the president to quit today after four days of looting and rioting over austerity measures claimed 18 lives and forced the mass resignation of the cabinet.
Two people were killed today while protesting ouside the presidential palace.
As the country grappled with its worst economic crisis in decades, hundreds of peaceful protesters angry at wage and pension cuts to pay off public debt surged into the historic Plaza de Mayo outside the presidential palace, ringed by police granted special powers of arrest by a state of siege.
The protesters demanded President Fernando de la Rua follow the example of his Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo and quit.
"The best Christmas gift the president can give us is to quit," said one protester.
The death toll has risen from earlier police reports which reported that nine people had been killed, 138 injured and 551 arrested during street protests and the looting of shops and supermarkets.
Ten were killed in the greater Buenos Aires area, five in Rosario and the rest in Santa Fe, Cipolletti and Corrientes. More than 150 people have been injured in the violence.
A young boy from Corrientes, in northeastern Argentina, was shot and killed last night as looters and police exchanged fire.
One man was killed in Buenos Aires by a stray shot as he was watching a looting incident from the roof of a school, police said earlier.
It is the worst crisis the country has faced since the end of the last dictatorship in 1983. Popular anger at wage and pension cuts to pay off public debt and end a recession in its fourth year boiled over into violence at the weekend.
Mr De la Rua, one of Argentina's most unpopular democratic leaders, has blamed the rioting on "enemies of the republic."
A recession in its fourth year in means 2,000 people a day drop below the poverty line. The unemployment rate of 18.3 per cent and hungry hordes are tough to accept for a wheat and beef-rich country with the highest incomes and biggest middle class in Latin America.
Argentina's largest labor union, the CGT, with eight million members, called a general strike beginning tonight.
The strike will continue until midnight tomorrow, according to union sources.
The IMF, which this month held back $1.3 billion in Argentine aid because of missed fiscal targets, said it was "concerned" about Argentina, but fears earlier this year that it could trigger a worldwide market rout have faded.