LatinNews Daily Report - 05 December 2013

SECURITY | Shoot-out in northern Nicaragua. On 4 December Nicaraguan police announced that ten people had been killed, including four police officials, in a clash between security forces and a “gang of delinquents” in the town of Bocas de Ayapal, in the northern department of Jinotega.  While the police claimed the shoot-out took place when “common delinquents” tried to rob a local grocery store, such deadly violence is unusual in Nicaragua and has revived concerns about the presence of armed groups operating in the north of the country. Human rights activists like Roberto Petray of the Asociación Nicaragüense Pro Derechos Humanos told the national daily La Prensa that he had been given local eye-witness accounts according to which the clashes took place after an armed group entered the town. The local Catholic Church has raised concerns since 2009 about the presence of armed groups in the north of the country with political aims, although the government and the military continue to downplay them as common delinquents. On 21 October, the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Monsignor Silvio Báez, gave an interview with a local television station, Channel 12, in which he said: “It is true that in these armed bands there is a mix of all sorts, but there are people who have taken up arms for political reasons. This is something that our brother bishops of the north have been able to verify; what the army and the police must do is to accept that truth and deal with it.”