EL ALTO, Bolivia, Sept 23, (AP): Bolivia's pro-government supporters and security forces confronted protesters loyal to former president Evo Morales in a street melee Sunday, the second such violent escalation this week as fears grew of further unrest in the Andean nation. The protesters and counterprotesters hurled firecrackers, homemade explosives and stones at each other across a dusty sprawl in the city of El Alto, while riot police unleashed tear gas into the crowds.

At least eight people were injured, Bolivia's health ministry reported. The standoff - erupting while thousands of Bolivians supporting Morales continued a weeklong 190-kilometer (118-mile) march to the capital of La Paz - spoke to the depth of the schism in Bolivian politics ahead of next year's presidential election.

Morales and his former economy minister-turned-bitter-rival, current President Luis Arce, are vying to lead Bolivia's long-dominant socialist party, known by its Spanish acronym MAS, into the 2025 vote. In recent months their power struggle has paralyzed the government, exacerbated the depletion of Bolivia's foreign-exchange reserves and fueled street protests. The rolling political crisis began in 2019, when Morales - who came to power in 2006 - was forced to resign after being reelected to a third term in a vote marred by accusations of fraud and mass protests.

He left the country but made a dramatic political comeback a year later, returning to find he had retained widespread support among poor and Indigenous Bolivians. Mobilized by Morales, bound together by misery over Bolivia’s economic meltdown and outraged by President Arce's efforts to block the candidacy of their polarizing former leader, the marchers stopped Sunday on their sixth day of walking to sleep at an encampment 11 kilometers (7 miles) from El Alto, a sprawling city on a plateau above Bolivia’s capital.