About 500 people have been injured and around 200 arrested.
Protesters with their faces covered wave flags during a demonstration against the government of Colombia's President Ivan Duque in Bogota (Photo: AFP)
As anti-government protests in Colombia turned violent, riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades clashed with rock-throwing demonstrators in Bogota on Tuesday that left 11 people injured and nearly 100 arrested.
According to the police chief Oscar Atehortua, the massive protests also took place in other major cities including Cali and Medellin, and nationwide the authorities recorded 165 marches, rallies or road blockages.
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Most of the arrests were in Bogota and 10 of the 11 injured were police, he added.
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The Bogota events started in the late afternoon as a traditional pot-banging demonstration of the kind common in Latin America and late last year when protests first erupted against conservative President Ivan Duque’s 17-month-old government.
Security forces were still deployed in the old quarter of Bogota as night fell Tuesday. Mayor Claudia Lopez said the day had been mostly peaceful, although in some neighbourhoods small groups turned violent.
Last year, in November, three people were killed and 98 detained after huge protests called by social movements in several cities around the city to express their rejection of the social and economic policies of President Ivan Duque.
Earlier, thousands of protesting Colombians crowded the streets of Bogota, Cali, Medellin and other big cities until well into the night, when a sudden clanging of pots and pans resounded in most districts of the capital and spread to other towns.
Lopez, who took office on January 1, has set up procedures to try to prevent violence at demonstrations, which have left four people dead since they began on November 21.
About 500 people have been injured and around 200 arrested.
The president defended what he called “a national conversation” with various sectors of society to try to find a way out of the stand-off.
Earlier, after the protests, vandals confronted police in the downtown Plaza Bolivar and attacked the Capitol, the Palace of Justice and the Lievano Palace, the seat of the Mayor’s Office, with stones, paint and Molotov cocktails.
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