A nationwide strike brought parts of Venezuela to a halt Thursday as the opposition ramped up its challenge to President Nicolas Maduro following four months of deadly street protests and amid threats of US economic sanctions.
A 24-year-old died in the Los Teques neighborhood on the outskirts of Caracas, while three people were wounded.
In the city of Valencia, in the district of La Isbaelica, a 23-year-old died and six people were wounded, the prosecutors' office said.
The deaths raised to 99 the number of fatalities in Venezuela since street protests turned violent in April.
The 24-hour stoppage affected areas of the capital and other regions, including the country's second-biggest city of Maracaibo, with businesses shuttered, public transport stalled and streets often deserted.
Opposition demonstrators also clashed with riot police elsewhere in Caracas, and set a police booth on fire. There were several arrests.
Stones were also thrown at the headquarters of VTV state television.
"It doesn't matter losing a day's work if we're losing the country," said one striker, a 34-year-old owner of a small Caracas construction firm who only gave his first name, Omar.
"I'm joining the strike to rescue the little remaining for us, to increase pressure" on Maduro, he said.
By backing the opposition's "final offensive" against the president, Omar and other companies taking part risked government reprisals. Maduro has also promised criminal punishment for those deemed "conspirators."
But, as with the politics of this impoverished oil-rich nation, polarization was evident.
In pro-government parts of the capital, life went on as normal.
Maduro seized on the areas of normality to claim victory over the strikers, saying key sectors were "100 percent" unaffected by the strike.
"The only ones who can bring this country to a halt are the Chavistas," he said, referring to pro-government supporters named after late president Hugo Chavez.
Maria Francis, a 53-year-old worker in the Caracas metro system, called it an "absurd strike." The opposition, she said, "wants the United States to come in and take over the country."
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Controversial election
Maduro, however, is under fire domestically and internationally over plans for a July 30 election of a citizens' body -- a "Constituent Assembly" -- to rewrite the constitution.
US President Donald Trump has warned of unspecified "swift economic actions" against Venezuela if the vote goes ahead.
Maduro has defiantly said the threat made him determined "more than ever" to see through the election.
Venezuela's economy is almost wholly dependent on its oil exports. Around a third of its crude production of 1.9 million barrels a day goes to the United States.
The head of the state-run oil company PDVSA on Thursday told state television that the 24-hour strike had not affected its operations.
The opposition is feeling invigorated in its campaign against Maduro by an unofficial plebiscite it held last weekend in which 7.6 million Venezuelans -- more than a third of the electorate -- overwhelmingly cast ballots against the Constituent Assembly.
It is also buoyed by implicit support from abroad, including from Trump, the European Union, the Organization of American States and major Latin American nations.
Loyal military
Many of Venezuela's suffering businesses backed the strike. More than two-thirds have closed in the past decade, according to the FEDECAMARAS employers' association.
"This strike is an impulse shared by business owners and a famished and impoverished population against a government that is also broken but which controls the few resources of an oil country," said analyst Luis Vicente Leon of the Datanalisis polling firm.
Datanalisis surveys have shown that more than 70 percent of Venezuelans reject Maduro's leadership.
But the president has brushed aside opposition moves to force him out. He can count on a loyal military, which has been given control of swaths of the economy.
With past efforts at dialogue failed, the opposition has turned to sustained street protests, which have seen 98 people killed since they turned violent in April, and Thursday's strike.
Workers in public offices, however, were reluctant to take part.
"If I don't go to work, they'll fire me," a 39-year-old public worker who gave her name as Carolina told AFP.
Venezuela's economy is expected to shrink by nine percent this year, said Asdrubal Oliveros of the consulting firm Ecoanalitica. Inflation is expected to top 700 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Maduro has presented his Constituent Assembly as the only path to "peace" and prosperity. But he but has not explained how the body or a new constitution would bring that about.
The opposition believes the assembly is a power grab tactic designed to eliminate the national legislature, which it has controlled since 2015.
