International

Fresh street battles and fires have broken out in downtown Santiago just hours after Chile’s embattled president, Sebastían Piñera, fired hardline members of his cabinet in an attempt to defuse the country’s biggest political crisis since the return to democracy in 1990.Bands of protesters lit bonfires along the central Alameda Avenue and clashed with riot police as clouds of teargas and smoke engulfed the centre of the city. In cities ranging from Antofagasta and Copiapo in the desert north to Osorno and Valdivia in the south, looting, fires and mayhem broke out during the afternoon and evening. Videos of bands of youth looting trucks on the nation’s primary north-south route circulated on social media while in Santiago the wail of sirens carried into the night.