Laht.com: Around 60 souls are thought to have met their maker last weekend as the result of unwanted attention from twisted minds in and around this capital, adding yet more weight to Venezuela's unenviable reputation as one of the most violent places on the planet that isn't actually at war. By midnight Sunday, the number of dead bodies landing up at the city morgue in Bello Monte in Caracas had scaled 58 and unconfirmed results say the toll went on mounting afterwards.

Nobody's sure just where the final tally came out, which isn't unusual. As is by now entirely customary, there was a nary a word from the Interior and Justice Ministry about what was actually going on. Naturally, that didn't stop the news.

A young man got off a bus outside a church in Palo Verde in the east of the city, on his way to visit his two-year-old son in Jose Felix Ribas, one of the dodgiest parts of this far from safe city. He never got even there. It appears that Gerardo Jose Pimental, 21, was aware that another passenger was after him and up to no good. Once off the bus, he tried to run but his persecutor gave chase, grabbed him and shot him five times in the face. Pimental died on the spot, outside the church. Relatives reckon the killer was a neighbor who'd convinced himself that Pimental had something to do with the murder of his own boy, so it seems that revenge was in the air.

This may also have been the case for Jaime Rafael Varela Lopez, 30, a motor mechanic who was mowed down as he chatted with a chum in El Manguito, Carapita, on the other side of town. This isn't so very far from the zoo, and it was a human animal that did for Varela Lopez. A man got out of a car and began banging away at Varela Lopez and his friend. Both ended up in hospital, where Varela Lopez expired on the slab as surgeons tried to extract a bullet and save his life. Back in El Manguito, people opted for understatement, complaining that life had gotten "very unsafe" there.

Down in Charallave, south of Caracas, in a barrio called Manguito 3, two guys were killed after they were jumped by a couple of bandits known only by their nicknames, "El Yofre" and "El Cuky" (which might or might not mean cookie; be that as it may, clearly he's not quite right in the head) who chased one of them into the house of the other.

Out on the road to Guarenas, a gang of about 15 men came looking for Ruben Inocencio Lunares Lopez, 41, who was disabled and couldn't get out of the line of fire. Afterwards, his family wrapped the body in a sheet and carried it down a hill because an ambulance couldn't get up there. Lunares Lopez was the second man to be slain in what's said to be a neighbourhood blood feud. The first victim, Hector Pena, who apparently didn't get on with the local folks, had been given the coup de grace in the back of the head a few days before. Neighbors unkindly suggested it was perhaps time that Interior & Justice Minister Tarek El Assaimi came and lived in the barrio ... but he was miles away, announcing another high-profile drugs haul, this time in Puerto Cabello, Carabobo state.

In Barcelona, Anzoategui state, the scientific and investigative police, CICPC, once again found themselves investigating the death of one of their own. This time, it wasn't a case of a hero getting killed in the line of duty, but an instan