At least 15 people were killed during anti-government protests in Bolivia yesterday.
Police clashed with protesters armed with slings and stones demanding the removal of US-backed President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.Mr Sanchez de Lozada, a US ally in the anti-drug war, refused to step down. "I am not going to quit," he said in a televised national address. "Bolivia is in danger."
More than 50 people have been killed in a month of protests by thousands of workers and peasant farmers against Mr Sanchez de Lozada's free market economic policies and his failure to tackle endemic poverty.
Bolivia's Permanent Human Rights Assembly said 14 people - two of them soldiers - were killed in and around La Paz and the nearby industrial suburb of El Alto, while local television reported another protester was killed in demonstrations in the Amazonian district of Santa Cruz.
Mr Sanchez de Lozada repeated accusations that unspecified foreign interests were bankrolling the protests.
The unrest was initially sparked by plans to export natural gas to the United States, which angered many Bolivians who feared the benefits would not reach the broad population.
The planned export route, via Chile, also raised tension because of an age-old dispute between the two neighbours over Bolivian access to the Pacific.
The protests gained momentum from resentment at Mr Sanchez de Lozada's economic policies and failure to raise livingstandards in one of the poorest countries in the Westernhemisphere.