Nicaraguan forces violently retake symbolic city

Nicaraguan police and armed pro-government civilians on Tuesday laid siege to and then retook a symbolically important neighborhood that had recently become a center of resistance to President Daniel Ortega’s government.

Government forces began advancing on Masaya’s Monimbo neighborhood before dawn and had largely regained control of it by the afternoon for the first time since massive protests against Ortega’s government began in mid-April.

Youths fired homemade mortars from behind barriers of stacked paving stones pried from streets lined by single-story homes and artisan workshops in the town about 16 miles (26 kilometers) southeast of the capital.

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