CARACAS: Venezuelan police are investigating a shooting in Caracas during a campaign event of presidential opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, authorities said Monday.
Unknown assailants fired shots that wounded a student Sunday.
The Attorney General's office announced that a prosecutor is leading the investigation to "determine the facts of violence that occurred last Sunday afternoon March 4 during a political rally in San Jose parish, Cotiza section, where a citizen was injured."
A preliminary investigation showed that a group of people attending the rally "were assaulted by various motorists," the Attorney General's statement said.
Capriles said the assailants on motorcycles were sent by the United Socialist Party to disrupt the rally as the campaign moves closer to the October 7 election.
He made the allegation in a statement on his Twitter account.
The shooting injured the son of a political opponent of President Hugo Chavez. The opponent is a lawmaker from Venezuela's National Assembly.
"That bullet could have killed my child, me or the presidential candidate," lawmaker Ismael Garcia said Monday.
Ruling party vice president Diosdado Cabello accused the opposition party of contributing to the violence, saying it showed "the little knowledge they have about actions in the streets."
"The candidate of the right (Capriles) is the one causing the violence," Cabello said. "We ask the Ministry of Interior and Justice, the Attorney General to investigate whether these injuries are from gunshots or something else."
Chavez, who is being treated in Cuba following a recurrence of cancer, is running for a third six-year term in the October presidential election.
Capriles was chosen as Chavez's opponent from the Justice First Party during a February 12 primary election in which more than three million people, or 17pc of Venezuela's registered voters, cast their ballots.
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