Policeman shot dead in Venezuela protests

CARACAS: A Venezuelan policeman died after he was shot in the neck Thursday in clashes with anti-government demonstrators in Caracas angered by pre-dawn raids on their protest camps.

Authorities demolished the camps and detained 243 people in the surprise early morning raids, striking at the remaining bastions of a months-long and at times deadly movement led by students against the leftist administration of President Nicolas Maduro.

Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres said the sites were "being used by more violent groups to commit terrorist acts.

"But hours later, groups of youths were back out on the streets of the capital, where they were met by tear gas and rubber bullets. Authorities declined to identify the Bolivarian National Police officer who was shot dead, while Yoryi Carvajal, police chief of the Caracas district of Chacao, said another police officer was shot and wounded in the same incident.

Two more were "wounded by blunt objects," Carvajal said.

At least 42 people have died and more than 700 have been injured since students and other opponents of the socialist government took to the country´s streets in February to protest rampant crime, runaway inflation and shortages of basic goods.

Over the past month, the protest movement has largely been concentrated in Occupy-style encampments in Caracas, with the main one set up in a tony neighborhood opposite the office of the United Nations Development Program. That site -- which consisted of hundreds of tents and blocked three of six lanes of a major thoroughfare -- was ravaged in the raid.

"Very few young people were able to escape the onslaught," said lawyer and human rights activist Elenis Rodriguez.

Rodriguez Torres said police seized drugs, weapons, explosives, mortars, grenades and gas canisters during their operation -- "everything you would use to confront the security forces on a daily basis."

Student leader Juan Requesens vowed the demonstrators would not be deterred.

"The students will pursue their fight for rights," he said.