UPDATE 1-Soldiers, police and demonstrators clash in Chilean capital

Soldiers in armored personnel carriers confronted demonstrators in one of Chilean capital Santiago's central squares on Saturday afternoon and shopping malls across the city were shut down as violent protests showed little sign of slowing. Burning barricades of tires and logs were set up along several main roads, a supermarket was set on fire and police fired tear gas and used water cannon on demonstrators throwing rocks and projectiles in "many locations," a police spokesman said.

Children and elderly people came out in cities around the country, local media said, banging cooking pots and honking car horns in solidarity with the demonstrations, which started on Oct.7 over recent fare hikes on public transportation and have expanded amid generalized frustration over the high cost of living in one of Latin America's most developed economies. Center-right President Sebastian Pinera announced a state of emergency in Santiago and its surroundings early on Saturday morning - something not seen in the capital since shortly before the end of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1990.

The decision to deploy the armed forces was met with widespread shock in a nation that lived under a military dictatorship for 17 years. Pinera met ministers and ruling coalition mayors for crisis talks on Saturday afternoon but opposition leaders stayed away, calling instead for the president to remove troops from the streets and reverse the public transport cost hike.

Heraldo Muñoz, the president of the center-left Party for Democracy (PPD), called for the transport minister and others to step down. "It seems to me that the incompetence we've seen from cabinet ministers means we should see resignations offered," he told a news conference. Government spokeswoman Cecilia Perez appealed to Chileans to band together and denounced "irresponsible, populist leaders" she said was advocating violence. She warned against a repeat in Chile of the protests and political violence seen in Ecuador and Venezuela in recent months.

"Today is not the time to seek political advantage," she told reporters outside La Moneda presidential palace on Saturday morning. "Let us be respectful, responsible and have faith in our armed forces." She defended Pinera, who was photographed in an upmarket Italian restaurant on Friday evening as police and demonstrators clashed and firefighters battled blazes in multiple metro stations and the high-rise downtown headquarters of power utility Enel.

The pictures were met with fury on social media by commentators who said they were emblematic of a president - a billionaire businessman who introduced credit cards to Chile - who was out of touch with ordinary Chileans. "The president had been working since very early, concerned and busy with this," she said.

General Javier Iturriaga del Campo told a news conference at La Moneda in the early hours of Saturday that his troops would focus their patrols on "the most conflict-hit areas" but would impose no curfew "for now." Prosecutors said 179 people had been charged, 49 of them minors. Police told Reuters that on Friday alone, 156 police officers were injured, including five seriously. Forty-nine police cars were damaged and 41 metro stations vandalized.

Karla Rubilar, the regional governor of Santiago, said by Saturday afternoon five buses had also been burned. City authorities confirmed schools would be shut on Monday and Tuesday. Several major supermarket chains, including Walmart's local Lider stores, closed early, along with major shopping malls, after fliers circulated on social media calling for raids on upmarket areas of the city.

Sporting and cultural events have been canceled for the weekend, the metro network remains closed and foreign embassies have updated their security advisories for expatriates and visitors, urging them to avoid crowds and carry identification. In Maipu, a working-class area to the east of the city, police reinforced by soldiers fought running battles with protesters, local television news reported. Residents in the working-class area of Cerro Navia said gunfire had been heard overnight. "We've been shut up in our home and there are fires everywhere," one resident told Reuters.

Although Chile has seen student-led protests in recent years that have sometimes turned violent, the severity of this week's clashes is unusual in what is normally one of the region's most stable countries. In just over three weeks, Chile is due to host U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping along with many others for a regional summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Weeks later, it will host other world leaders for the COP25 United Nations climate change summit.

Political commentators and opposition parties have lambasted the response by Pinera's government, saying he should have sought dialogue with protesters instead of rolling out riot police. Lucia Dammert, an expert in public security at the University of Santiago, wrote on Twitter: "The state of emergency is a measure of last resort, the government had many other tools available to it to calm things down."

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)