Venezuelan opposition candidate shot dead during campaign event

CARACAS: An opposition candidate in Venezuela’s upcoming legislative elections was shot dead during an event Wednesday, alongside the wife of a jailed opposition leader, an official said.

The December 6 elections are critical to President Nicolas Maduro’s socialists remaining in power.

“Luis Manuel Diaz, local leader of the Democratic Action party in Altagracia de Orituco (Guarico state) has just been shot dead,” the party’s chairman Henry Ramos Allup said on Twitter.

Ramos Allup said Diaz was standing next to Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who is in prison for incitement to violence in 2014 antigovernment protests.