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Violence and looting continued on Sunday in Chile on the third day of the country's worst riots in decades, with two dead and at least three wounded.
For the second night in a row, a curfew was imposed in Santiago between 19:00 and 06:00 local time. At the same time, the "state of emergency" is in force in five regions, including the capital of 7 million inhabitants. " Democracy has an obligation to defend itself ", said Chilean President Sebastian Pinera to justify these emergency measures, after a meeting with the Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the Court supreme. General Javier Iturriaga, who was charged with public security by President Pinera on Friday, called on the residents to remain " calm " and not to leave their homes.
Riots, the worst in Chile for decades, continued on Sunday. Clashes took place between protesters and police officers in Plaza Italia, in central Santiago, where police responded to protesters with tear gas and fountains.
At the same time, looting was taking place in several parts of the capital. Access to several hypermarkets, which remained closed Sunday, were forced by protesters, mostly young, who came out of the arms loaded with merchandise.
Nearly 10,000 police and military personnel have been deployed. Military patrols on the streets are a first in the country since the end of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). According to the authorities, 1,462 people were arrested, including 644 in the capital and 848 in the rest of the country.
After three days of violence, the center of the Chilean capital and other major cities, such as Valparaiso and Concepcion, offered faces of desolation: red lights on the ground, charred bus carcasses, shops looted and burned, and thousands of stones and sticks dotting the roadways.
These riots killed two people in the night from Saturday to Sunday in the fire of a supermarket in San Bernardo, in the south of the capital. " There was a looting and a fire, in which two women died and a third person was burned 75%, " said Interior and Security Minister Andrés Chadwick. According to the authorities, two people were also shot and hospitalized in a "serious" state after an incident with the police during looting, also in the south of the capital.
The demonstrations began Friday to protest against an increase of 800 to 830 pesos (about 1.04 euros) in the price of metro tickets in Santiago, with the largest network (140 km) and the most modern in South America which carries about three million passengers daily. Sebastian Pinera suspended the hike on Saturday. But the protests and violence continued, fueled by anger at the socio-economic conditions and inequalities in the country, where access to health and education is almost entirely the private sector.