Reuters AlertNet - Bolivia sends in troops as protests choke capital

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Bolivia sent in thousands of troops backed by tanks on Sunday to control the outskirts of La Paz and open roads blocked by farmers and workers protesting the free-market policies of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

Fuel and basic foods were running short in the capital as thousands of poor Bolivians opposed to the highly unpopular Sanchez de Lozada stopped convoys of trucks entering the Andean city.

Witnesses said troops stood guard on the main road of El Alto, a poor industrial suburb of La Paz that has been the center of protests against the government. Sporadic gunfire could be heard and some small groups of protesters marched in some streets.

"A military operation is under way to regain control of El Alto," presidential spokesman Mauricio Antezana said at a pre-dawn news conference, adding the government could decree a curfew there "at any time" to stop what it perceived as a coup attempt by its opponents -- a charge it has made on several occasions in the past.

Around a dozen people, including a child, have been killed in nearly a month of protests. It is the worst violence since February, when a government austerity drive backed by the International Monetary Fund sparked massive riots in which 32 people died.

Two people were killed on Saturday and dozens more were injured as protesters fought pitched battles with police and security forces outside the capital, local media reported.

Protests by the country's poor Indian majority against Sanchez de Lozada have spiraled in the last month amid an economic downturn in this nation of 8 million people, one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

An unpopular project to export natural gas to the United States through Chile -- which has had tense diplomatic relations with Bolivia because of a border dispute -- has also become a lightning rod for protests.

Hundreds of people in the north were stranded last month by Indian peasants protesting deep poverty engulfing two thirds of the mostly indigenous population in a land where most struggle to scrape by on just a couple of dollars a day.

Sanchez de Lozada, a U.S. ally in the anti-drug war who is widely unpopular for failing to alleviate poverty, has played down the protests and defied calls to step down.

Local media reported that basic foods and agricultural products were increasingly hard to buy as protesters blockaded the six main roads into La Paz, and reported isolated cases of looting overnight in El Alto.

Next week, transport workers and coca farmers -- angry at a U.S.-backed drive to eradicate illegal crops of coca, the raw material used to make cocaine -- are expected to join the protests.

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