The man who died in the nightclub shooting has not been named, but local media report he is a 37-year-old security guard.
Police say the other men who were shot are aged 28, 29 and 50. The youngest is in a critical condition.
Victoria Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper described the injuries they sustained as "horrific".
"This is just a horrendous act. It's a busy nightclub, one of the main nightclubs in Melbourne in one of the main entertainment precincts in Melbourne," he told a news conference.
No arrests have yet been made, and police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
The man who died in the nightclub shooting has not been named, but local media report he is a 37-year-old security guard.
Police say the other men who were shot are aged 28, 29 and 50. The youngest is in a critical condition.
Victoria Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper described the injuries they sustained as "horrific".
"This is just a horrendous act. It's a busy nightclub, one of the main nightclubs in Melbourne in one of the main entertainment precincts in Melbourne," he told a news conference.
No arrests have yet been made, and police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
The man who died in the nightclub shooting has not been named, but local media report he is a 37-year-old security guard.
Police say the other men who were shot are aged 28, 29 and 50. The youngest is in a critical condition.
Victoria Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper described the injuries they sustained as "horrific".
"This is just a horrendous act. It's a busy nightclub, one of the main nightclubs in Melbourne in one of the main entertainment precincts in Melbourne," he told a news conference.
No arrests have yet been made, and police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
The man who died in the nightclub shooting has not been named, but local media report he is a 37-year-old security guard.
Police say the other men who were shot are aged 28, 29 and 50. The youngest is in a critical condition.
Victoria Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper described the injuries they sustained as "horrific".
"This is just a horrendous act. It's a busy nightclub, one of the main nightclubs in Melbourne in one of the main entertainment precincts in Melbourne," he told a news conference.
No arrests have yet been made, and police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
The man who died in the nightclub shooting has not been named, but local media report he is a 37-year-old security guard.
Police say the other men who were shot are aged 28, 29 and 50. The youngest is in a critical condition.
Victoria Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper described the injuries they sustained as "horrific".
"This is just a horrendous act. It's a busy nightclub, one of the main nightclubs in Melbourne in one of the main entertainment precincts in Melbourne," he told a news conference.
No arrests have yet been made, and police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
CARACAS/MARACAIBO (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday ordered an expansion of civilian militia by nearly one million members as opposition leader Juan Guaido toured western Zulia state, which has been hard hit by electricity blackouts.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a ceremony to mark the 17th anniversary of the return to power of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez after a coup attempt and the National Militia Day in Caracas, Venezuela April 13, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Guaido, the leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly who in January invoked Venezuela’s constitution to assume an interim presidency, has called on the military to abandon Maduro amid a hyperinflationary economic collapse made worse by several nationwide blackouts in the past month.
Guaido has been recognized as Venezuela’s rightful leader by the United States and most Western countries, who agree with his argument that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.
The civilian militia, created in 2008 by the late former president and Maduro mentor Hugo Chavez, reports directly to the presidency and is intended to complement the armed forces.
Maduro, who calls Guaido a U.S. puppet, said he aimed to raise the number of militia members to three million by year-end from what he said was more than 2 million currently. Maduro has encouraged them to become involved in agricultural production.
Shortages of food and medicine have prompted more than three million Venezuelans to emigrate in recent years.
“With your rifles on your shoulders, be ready to defend the fatherland and dig the furrow to plant the seeds to produce food for the community, for the people,” Maduro, a socialist, told thousands of militia members gathered in the capital Caracas, wearing khaki camouflaged uniforms.
So far, the military top brass has remained loyal to Maduro despite Guaido’s offer of amnesty to military members who switch sides. Hundreds of soldiers have sought asylum in neighboring Colombia.
While electricity has largely been restored in Caracas, Maduro’s administration is rationing power to the rest of Venezuela.
Guaido is traveling in the interior to drum up support. In Zulia state, the site of the OPEC member’s first oil well and home to Venezuela’s second-largest city, Maracaibo, he said: “We are here to check on the situation, your suffering. But Zulia will rise up.”
Separately on Saturday, two employees of Venezuela’s central bank who were arrested after meeting with Guaido earlier this week were freed, rights group Penal Forum said.
Rights groups say Venezuelan authorities have arrested over 1,000 people after anti-government demonstrations this year. Guaido’s chief of staff was arrested last month.
Reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas and Mariela Nava in Maracaibo; additional reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Grant McCool
Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro must be “fought against” to ensure that he leaves power, a top regional diplomat said Saturday after a meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“We have said always with dictators, with tyrants, we do not dialogue,” Paraguayan Foreign Minister Luis Castiglioni told reporters. “Tyrants and dictators are combated, are fought against. We have to combat them in order to recover the basic liberties of the Venezuelan people so they can live with dignity again, once again.”
Pompeo traveled to the capital city of Asunción as part of a four-country swing through Latin America this weekend, where he is meeting with partner governments to fortify opposition to Maduro. Paraguay is a member of the Lima Group, a 12-country bloc of nations that coordinated with President Trump’s administration to denounce Maduro and recognized top opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido as the legitimate interim president in January.
“We are convinced that all the diplomatic effort to isolate that regime will have results in a short time,” Castiglioni said when asked if Paraguay would support a military intervention against Maduro. “It’s going to have concrete results, and these results will be seen from the reaction of the people of Venezuela, of the very armed forces of Venezuela’s.”
Maduro has retained control of the Venezuelan military through the assistance of Cuban security officials, backed by diplomatic support from Russia and China. The Venezuelan crisis has occasioned a high-profile diplomatic fight between the three major world powers over who is intervening illegitimately into Venezuelan affairs.
"Everyone knows about Venezuela, the blitzkrieg change failed, but the Americans do not refuse the goal of overthrowing the legitimate president,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Saturday, drawing an apparent analogy between Pompeo’s diplomatic efforts and the Nazi tactics used at the beginning of the Second World War.
“The Americans even dragged out the notorious Monroe Doctrine out of the woodwork,” said Lavrov. “They do not seem to understand that they are opposing themselves to the entire Latin American world and not only to the Latin American world.”
Pompeo derided those “hypocritical” criticisms throughout his trip. “It’s almost funny to say, right?” He told Voice of America on Saturday. “The Cubans own the security apparatus ... the people of Venezuela, want their own security. They want their own democracy. They want Venezuelans to lead their nation, not people from a small island, not people from Russia.”
Castiglioni’s sharp rhetoric helped underscore Pompeo’s argument that Maduro is opposed by key regional nations, not just the United States. “It is also a commitment of Paraguay to defend democracy, public freedoms, human rights, will be beyond our borders,” he said. “It will be in the region, in the hemisphere, and in the whole world.”
