Ecuador arrests shopkeepers, man dies as protests rage

A protester aims to throw as people block a road amid clashes with soldiers during a demonstration after Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno’s government ended the four-decade-old fuel subsidies in Lasso, Ecuador on Oct. 6. REUTERS/CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS
A protester aims to throw as people block a road amid clashes with soldiers during a demonstration after Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno’s government ended the four-decade-old fuel subsidies in Lasso, Ecuador on Oct. 6. REUTERS/CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS

QUITO – Ecuadorean authorities arrested shopkeepers for raising food prices as indigenous groups clashed with security forces on Sunday in a fourth day of protests against President Lenin Moreno’s austerity measures.      

One man died in central Azuay province when roadblocks hindered an ambulance from reaching him after he was hit by a car, authorities said.

Ecuadoreans complain consumer prices have risen sharply as an effect of Moreno’s abolition of fuel subsidies, which triggered a two-day strike by transport unions and the nation’s worst unrest in over a decade.    

The 66-year-old Moreno won the 2017 election and has set the oil-producing nation on a centrist track after years of socialist rule under predecessor Rafael Correa.(Reuters)

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