Paraguay's embattled President Raul Cubas announced his immediate resignation yesterday following several days of violence. Crowds that had gathered in the streets of the capital erupted in cheers, hugging each other and lighting fireworks.
Mr Cubas, impeached after the murder of Vice-President Luis Maria Argana this week and bloody riots, said in a speech: "I will not be responsible for the spilling of any more blood for questions of politics."
Senate President Luis Gonzalez Macchi was set to be sworn in as head of state within hours of the announcement, a Congress spokesman said.
Emergency impeachment proceedings against Mr Cubas began in Asuncion on Saturday, and the hearings will begin today, after a weekend in which four pro-democracy demonstrators were shot dead, and hundreds injured.
Local radio reported late last night the man who had been the political power behind Mr Cubas, former army chief, Gen Lino Oviedo, fled the country just before news emerged that Mr Cubas had quit. The unconfirmed reports said Gen Oviedo flew out of Paraguay in a small twin-prop plane owned by a rancher.
The unrest this week was triggered by bitter rivalry between two factions of Paraguay's ruling Colorado Party and the murder last Tuesday of Argana, the head of one of those factions.
Mr Cubas and Gen Oviedo, a convicted coup leader, have been blamed for Argana's killing and riots and sniping on Friday in which four died and nearly 200 were injured.
After Argana's death, Congress rushed through President Cubas' impeachment for abuse of power when he refused to send Gen Oviedo back to jail to serve a 10year jail term for a 1996 coup attempt. The Senate had been expected to muster the numbers to convict and remove Cubas from office.
Deputy Juan Dario Monjes told reporters he had been informed of Mr Cubas' resignation by Walter Bower, head of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house.
Thousands of Paraguayans who had camped outside Congress all week danced for joy at the news of the defeat of Cubas and Oviedo, a former army chief. "The Paraguayan army has not let us down!" they shouted, waving the red, white and blue Paraguayan flag and singing the national anthem.
Rumours of a military coup had swept the capital, Asuncion, all week. Cubas had sent armoured cars and troops to the square outside Congress to try to remove students and peasants calling for his resignation, but they were stopped by barricades.
Army sources revealed that members of Paraguay's air force, loyal to assassinated vice-president Argana, disobeyed presidential orders to fly over congress on Saturday, officially citing "technical incapacity" for their failure to do so.
Paraguay's ambassadors to France, Uruguay, the Vatican and Chile resigned in protest at President Cubas's "misrule" this weekend, leaving 16 countries without Paraguayan ambassadorial representation, including the US.