Honduran police fired tear gas at stone-throwing demonstrators protesting after the army ousted and exiled leftist President Manuel Zelaya yesterday in Central America's first military coup since the Cold War.
Witnesses said police fired gas at a group of some 30 demonstrators behind the presidential palace, which was heavily guarded by soldiers.
Hundreds of pro-Zelaya protesters, some masked and wielding sticks, set up barricades of chain link fences and downed billboards in the centre of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and blocked roads to the presidential palace.
Witnesses heard shots outside the presidential palace that apparently came after a truck arrived at the protest, and an ambulance also appeared. It was not clear who fired the shots. One witness said shots were fired only in the air and there were no initial reports of injuries.
Leftist Latin American leaders rallied around Mr Zelaya today and tried to thrash out a response to the coup.
The coup is the biggest political crisis to hit Central America in years and will test US president Barack Obama as he tries to mend Washington's battered image in Latin America.
The Obama administration called for Mr Zelaya's return to office as legitimate president of Honduras, placing itself in the same camp as a group of leftist governments that are at ideological loggerheads with the United States.
Mr Obama said it would set a "terrible precedent" if the coup was not reversed and President Zelaya restored to power.
Mr Obama, after a meeting in the Oval Office with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, said Washington would work with the Organization of American States and others to reinstate Mr Zelaya.
The Organisation of American States demanded Mr Zelaya's immediate return, saying no other government would be recognized.
Tension mounted this week when Mr Zelaya, a Chavez ally, angered the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and army by pushing for a public vote to gauge support for changing the constitution to let presidents seek re-election beyond a single four-year term.
Before he could hold the poll on Sunday, the Honduran military seized Mr Zelaya in his pyjamas and flew him to Costa Rica in Central America's first successful army coup since the Cold War.
"We cannot allow a return to the past. We will not permit it," thundered Chavez, a champion of Latin American socialism who survived an attempted army coup in 2002 and who has put his troops on alert in case Honduras moved against his embassy.
The Honduran Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, who announced a curfew for last night and tonight. The country's Supreme Court said it had ordered the army to remove Mr Zelaya.
Reuters