Cash-strapped Venezuela a major funder of Trump inauguration

The tensions were further provoked when Venezuela's opposition party's leader received a 15-year ban from all political work.

A 17-year-old boy and a 23-year-old woman died after being shot during the protests on Wednesday, while a soldier outside Caracas was also said to have been killed, bringing to eight the number of dead this month in a mounting political crisis. They included Maduro supporters who staged a counter-demonstration in the capital at Maduro's behest.

Venezuela's opposition renewed nationwide protests on Thursday to pressure President Nicolas Maduro to hold elections and improve a collapsing economy, and vowed to keep up pressure by staging three more protests in the next four days.

The President has accused the U.S. of funding right-wing opposition groups and called for the expansion of armed civilian militias following weeks of violent protests in the nation's capital.

The plant in the industrial city of Valencia was confiscated on Wednesday as anti-government protesters clashed with security forces and pro-government groups in a country battered by economic troubles, including food shortages and triple-digit inflation.

The EU's executive commission said Thursday that it was "saddened" by the deaths of two young people during Wednesday's protests.

The opposition rejected his comments as a desperate attempt to intimidate Venezuelans from exercising their constitutional right to protest.

As they did Wednesday, opposition leaders are asking marchers to meet at 26 points throughout the city and converge on the office of the government's top human rights official. "If we were millions today, tomorrow we will be more". "I tried to protect her as much as I could", he added, sobbing in front of her body. "I want us to prepare to have a prompt, total electoral victory", he said.

Of these, 33 people had multiple injuries, 10 with asphyxiation symptoms "as a result of tear gas" used by the police forces to disperse the protest, and 14 with "fainting and stress-related problems", according to Muchaco, who belongs to the opposition.

"Immediately the global media and those irresponsible people, including that trash called Capriles, came out to accuse the government, the revolution, the army, the National Guard", Maduro said, wearing a white doctor's gown during a televised address meant to showcase Venezuela's health system, which is in fact crumbling.

It's a route tens of thousands of angry protesters have attempted a half-dozen times in the past few weeks only to find their progress blocked by light-armored vehicles and a curtain of tear gas and rubber bullets fired by riot police officers.

Supporters of President Maduro have also been protesting.

The opposition marched to demand early elections, the release of political prisoners, and humanitarian aid.

The march followed a fortnight of violent protests triggered by a Supreme Court decision in March to assume the powers of the opposition-led Congress - which it quickly reversed under worldwide pressure.

The demonstrators were attempting to approach the office of the Ombudsman to ask for the official's support in the process that was launched by the opposition-controlled Parliament against the Supreme Court magistrates who took over some legislative duties.

"Opposition protesters say they've been roughed up, beaten and also threatened by these groups", Weddle said.

Maduro said he was expanding civilian militias created by his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez and giving each member a gun.

"We are extremely concerned that Rosneft's control of a major U.S. energy supplier could pose a grave threat to American energy security", six senators wrote in an April 4 letter to the U.S. Treasury secretary.

The elections council, which is sympathetic to the government, has delayed votes for state governors that were supposed to take place past year.