Bolivian President Evo Morales said today that security forces had thwarted a plan to assassinate him along with top officials, killing three foreigners in a half-hour shootout at a hotel.
Police chief Hugo Escobar said two Hungarians and one Bolivian were killed in the shootout in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz.
He also said an Irish person may have been among what he called foreign mercenaries involved in the alleged plot. He said two people had been arrested.
There was confusion regarding the nationalities of the foreigners killed, however. While the chief of police said two of those killed were from Hungary, several local media organisations reported they were from Romania and Ireland.
In La Paz, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia told reporters the men were carrying guns and grenades and attacked police as they approached them.
Government officials said authorities had recently been following the suspects.
Morales, a socialist, is Bolivia's first indigenous president and has faced tough opposition in relatively wealthy regions of the country, including Santa Cruz.
"Yesterday I gave instructions to the vice president to move to arrest these mercenaries and this morning I was informed of a half-hour shootout at a hotel in the city of Santa Cruz - three foreigners are dead and two arrested," Morales said during a visit to Venezuela.
Morales said he had information that the plot was to kill him, the vice president and a cabinet minister.
Morales has announced several plots against him in the past, but the results of investigations have never been released, causing some Bolivians to doubt their veracity.
The Bolivian leader frequently accuses the Santa Cruz-based political opposition of trying to overthrow him or destabilise his government. The opposition parties in Santa Cruz object to Morales's nationalisation of the country's natural gas industry, based in the Eastern lowland provinces.
Last year, right-wing opposition groups launched violent protests against a new referendum promoted by Morales that gives more power to the indigenous majority.
Morales expelled the US ambassador to Bolivia in September, accusing him of encouraging the protests in a bid to oust him.
The president ended a five-day hunger strike on Tuesday after lawmakers passed an electoral law that creates more seats in indigenous areas where his support is strongest. Morales had stopped eating to pressure for the law to be passed.
Critics say the law stacks the electoral field in his favour ahead of a December presidential election that the former coca farmer is expected to win.
Agencies