Amid ongoing anti-government protests in Chile, death toll rose to 19 on Friday, five of them are foreigners around the country during which the military took charge of maintaining order and curfews have been in force.

The latest victim was a Peruvian woman who died in hospital after being shot three days ago when a gang was looting of a store in the Puente Alto municipality on the capital’s south side, the Efe news reported.

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According to official government figures, the Peruvian citizen was the fifth foreigner killed during the week of protests, along with two Colombians, another Peruvian and an Ecuadorian.

From Peru, the Foreign Ministry of the Andean nation confirmed that three Peruvians have died, while Chile said only two have been counted. However, seven other bodies as yet unidentified were found inside supermarkets that were sacked and burned down.

Besides the number of dead, the Chilean government reported that 31 different protests occurred around the country this Thursday, chiefly in the port city of Valparaiso and in the capital’s western municipality of Maipu.

In this case the protest was against the high cost of driving on the expressways, since everyone has to pay a toll to use them.

On Thursday, during the day of protests, authorities counted 1,02,680 people protesting in the streets, significantly less than the day before, when almost 500,000 citizens went into the streets around the country to express their disillusion with the social inequality that exists in Chile.

Foreign Minister Teodoro Ribera said that the Chilean government would ask the UN to send human rights observers to monitor the nationwide protests.

President Sebastian Pinera was planning to contact UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet – who also happens to be his predecessor as Chile’s leader – to ask her to deploy a team of rapporteurs, according to the foreign ministry.

Bachelet, former Chilean president took to Twitter, saying “Having monitored the crisis from the beginning I have decided to send a verification mission to examine reports of human rights violations in Chile”.

On Wednesday, the National Human Rights Institute (INDH), an autonomous, publicly funded entity, in its latest tally said that a total of 2,410 people were under arrest nationwide.

Earlier on Tuesday, thousands of protesters took to the street to protests against the government.

Riot police used tear gas and streams of water to break up marches by rock-throwing demonstrators in several streets of Santiago while military and police guarded other Chileans who formed long lines at supermarkets.

Many stores, subway stations and banks were burned, damaged or looted over the weekend, and some people have reported problems getting cash at ATMs.

Last week, a total of 41 subway stations were damaged and at least 308 people were arrested during protests against an increase in metro faces in Santiago.

There are 582 people who have been injured in a week of protests, of whom 295 were wounded by weapons, either hit by tear gas bombs, rubber pellets or bullets.

The institute also confirmed reports of torture and abuse by state forces during the protests of the last few days.

The increase in the price of subway tickets set off a wave of protests, which, as the days went by, left citizens feeling that enough was enough. The meager pensions and wages and the high prices of electricity, gas, university education and healthcare sparked a social explosion of a kind not seen since the end of the dictatorship in 1990.

In response to the protests, the Chilean president decided to do something about certain elements of the political, economic and social model that are most rejected by the population, such as low pensions, the high cost of medicines and the paltry public healthcare system.

(With inputs from IANS )