30 April, 2017
Among those killed was a local government worker who was shot dead at a pro-government counter protest in the Andean state of Merida. Venezuela was already facing an economic crisis and food and medicine shortages when the protests began.
The government has ruled out a presidential election this year, maintaining that Maduro will see out his term into 2018. But with 11 candidates on the ballot, none is expected to win an outright majority.
MUD said one agreement struck with Maduro was for the release of an election schedule.
Opposition in Venezuela are calling for President Nicolas Maduro to hold new elections and do more to help people amid tough economic times. Reuters reporter Brian Ellsworth joins Hari Sreenivasan from the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. It was not immediately known whether he was a pro-government supporter or anti-Maduro.
He also said he wanted local elections to take place, although he did mention presidential elections.
Timochenko, the FARC's top leader, signed the communiqué in which Venezuela's opposition to paramilitarism in Colombia is compared to a guerrilla effort to discredit those opposed to the Maduro regime.
Weeks of political unrest have claimed another victim as Venezuela's opposition prepares for another mass protest.
President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government accuses protesters of seeking a violent coup with USA connivance, while the opposition says he has become a dictator repressing peaceful demonstrations.
"Venezuela is only the closest example, of how through that lovely experiment in democracy and tolerance, a government builds an economic and political alternative to the neoliberal design". The demonstrations were largely peaceful by mid-afternoon, although there were some scattered reports of security forces dispersing people with tear gas."In the morning they appear peaceful, in the afternoon they turn into terrorists and at night bandits and killers", senior Socialist Party official Diosdado Cabello said. Then a string of political leaders passed around a megaphone and from the back of a pick-up truck repeated their demand of recent days for immediate elections and freedom for dozens of jailed government opponents they consider political prisoners. The court quickly reversed course, but its widely condemned move still galvanised the opposition.
"They left us with nothing", said Manuel Martinez, who was directing cleanup and repairs at a destroyed grocery store.
"I ask Pope Francis from here on out to continue to accompany us in the dialogue, because there is a conspiracy in Rome and here as well against dialogue in Venezuela", he said.
