Four die in Buenos Aires attack

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Angry residents armed with guns turned a city park into a battlefield Friday, attacking migrant squatters and setting their tents on fire in the latest of weeklong clashes that have left four dead. The squatters, about 1,000 migrants mostly from neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay, had set up tents in the citys second-largest park in southern Buenos Aires to protest the lack of decent housing in the city. After police gave up trying to clear the park, people from the middle class neighborhood in the vicinity took matters into their own hands earlier this week and began attacking the squatters, some of them with guns. We dont want a villa miseria (slum) in the park, shouted some of the angry neighbors as they rushed into the park, while others blocked nearby avenues as part of the protest. Fridays violence, caught on national television, left a 19-year-old dead from a shot to the head and about a dozen other people injured, the citys medical emergency service told the C5N news channel. The nationality of the victim was not given. On Tuesday, a Bolivian and a Paraguayan were killed during a brief police incursiontheir lastin the park, and another Bolivian was killed in clashes Thursday. Argentinas relatively good economy has attracted an estimated 1.8 million people from Bolivia and Paraguay, two of Latin Americas poorest nations.

ePaper - Nawaiwaqt