Ortega Launches Massive Attack against Masaya

Death squads besiege the city: hundreds of paramilitaries in “operation clean up”

By Wilfredo Miranda / Maynor Salazar  (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES – The regime of Daniel Ortega launched an armed offensive on Tuesday morning against Masaya, specifically in the indigenous neighborhood of Monimbo, the epicenter of the resistance against the dictatorship.

Several people were injured, but the information has not yet been corroborated independently by journalists due to the siege that the National Police maintains around the city. Access to the city from Managua is closed from kilometer 14 of the Masaya Highway.

The joint attack of the Police and the paramilitary forces began around six in the morning. However, the deployment began in the early morning hours. According to the residents of Masaya, hundreds of armed men entered the city through different neighborhoods: the Malvinas, the Netherlands, Camilo Ortega, Magdalena, San Miguel and the Mebasa sector, on the road that leads to Catarina.

The paramilitaries and police were accompanied by mechanical shovels to knock down the cobblestone barricades. In the indigenous neighborhood of Monimbo, citizens responded to the rain of high-caliber bullets with homemade mortars, contact bombs, sling shots, and some short-range weapons.

Masaya Police Chief Ramon Avellan led the operation. On Monday, Avellán announced in Managua that they would “liberate” Monimbo “whatever the cost.” He said: “The order of our president and the vice president is to clean the streets of the barricades nationwide. And that’s the request of the population of Monimbo, which is our Monimbo, and our Masaya, and we are going to fulfill it. At whatever cost! ”

Also on Monday, Murillo said in her daily speech: “That atrocity is not going to govern Nicaragua, terrorism is not going to govern Nicaragua, the diabolic will never be able to govern Nicaragua.”

The paramilitaries shot at the residents with AKs, M16s, PKM. They blockaded all entries and exits to Masaya, creating a circle and attacking from different points: on the road to Catarina, the city center, the Paises bajos neighborhood, the Camilo Ortega Museum, and INATEC.

In the streets, groups of young people and adults tried to confront the paramilitaries at the few barricades that are in some neighborhoods of the city.

The police and paramilitaries used drones to spy on citizens and identify the streets through which they could enter.

The shots of the paramilitaries rang out everywhere. The citizens denounced that they are embedded in the walls of the houses. Others in the trees or in the vehicles that are parked in the streets.

The Vatican’s nuncio for Nicaragua, Monsignor Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, delivered an urgent message this morning on behalf of Pope Francis because of the “grave situation that is being experienced in the country.” “It is not acceptable to think that the dead and the victims of violence can solve a political crisis and guarantee a future of peace and prosperity in Nicaragua. Crying for all the dead and praying for their families, I call on the consciences of all to achieve a truce and allow a quick return to the national dialogue tables, “he said.