Three military units in Chapare province were “assaulted by irregular groups” on Friday, with the assailants “taking more than 200 military personnel hostage” from three barracks, the ministry said. “They seized weapons and ammunition,” it added.

Backers of Morales, the country’s first Indigenous leader, began blocking roads three weeks ago to prevent his arrest on what he calls trumped-up charges aimed at thwarting his political comeback.

Morales, after first threatening a hunger strike unless the government agreed to negotiations, later urged his supporters to consider suspending the roadblocks to “avoid bloodshed.” Morales, 65, was in office from 2006 to 2019, when he resigned under a cloud after elections marked by fraud.

Despite being barred from running again, Morales wants to challenge President Luis Arce, his former ally, for the nomination of the left-wing MAS party in elections next August. Days after he led a march of thousands of mainly Indigenous Bolivians on the capital La Paz to protest Arce’s policies, prosecutors announced Morales was under investigation for statutory rape, human trafficking and human smuggling over his alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 2015. Morales has called the accusations “a lie.”

Morales’s supporters initially demanded an end to what they called his “judicial persecution.” But the protest movement has snowballed into a wider anti-government revolt marked by calls for Arce to resign.