July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Manuel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran president, will attempt to re-enter the country again this week after the acting government prevented his plane from landing yesterday and several of his supporters were shot at a rally.

Honduras closed the international airport in Tegucigalpa for 48 hours today, Carlos Pacheco, a legal adviser at the airport, said in a phone interview. The closure came after two protesters died yesterday during a clash between Zelaya’s supporters and the military at the airport.

The Honduran military removed Zelaya and the country’s legislature made Roberto Micheletti president June 28 after a dispute over Zelaya’s effort to overhaul the constitution. He sought to hold a poll after the Supreme Court ruled it illegal, sparking a power struggle.

“Soldiers of the Honduran fatherland, in the name of God, don’t point your rifles at your own brothers,” Zelaya said at a news conference yesterday in San Salvador, the capital of neighboring El Salvador. Soldiers and police are escalating violence by using guns rather than batons to control protests, he said.

Two demonstrators were killed at yesterday’s airport protests, said Sandra Ponce, a spokeswoman for the country’s human rights prosecutor, in comments broadcast by Radio Globo. The victims were a 19-year-old and a boy, who may have been shot by the military or other protesters, she said.

July 8 Return

Zelaya is still in San Salvador and he will return to Honduras on July 8, Luis Roland Valenzuela, housing minister under Zelaya, told reporters today in Tecucigalpa.

“They deceived us,” Valenzuela said, citing an agreement with Micheletti that would have allowed Zelaya to land. “He wanted to land and Micheletti had said that it was fine.”

The U.S. State Department called for the restoration of “democratic order” in Honduras, and for Zelaya’s reinstatement.

“We deplore the use of force against demonstrators” in the country’s capital of Tegucigalpa, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said at a news conference today in Washington.

The exiled leader will head to the U.S. tomorrow, Kelly said. He spent last week touring Central America and the U.S. gathering support and winning a unanimous vote at the Organization of American States to suspend Honduras.

Micheletti put out an arrest warrant and vowed to block Zelaya’s return, warning his arrival could trigger violence.

‘Internal Conflicts’

“We have insisted that we not create internal conflicts,” Micheletti said at a news conference before the shooting, when asked why he didn’t let the plane land and arrest Zelaya. “We don’t want to spill a single drop of Honduran blood. And this could happen as a consequence of that.”

Thousands of supporters marched to the airport to await Zelaya, who flew from the OAS meeting in Washington on a plane provided by his ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Protesters began pulling apart a fence and government forces shot tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds. After shooting in the air, the police and military fired at the ground. At least five people were hit by gunfire and at least one killed, according to witnesses interviewed on the scene.

“I am furious, full of rage,” said Cesar Silva, 38, a television news reporter for Canal 8, which was closed by the new government. “How could they have shot on their own people?” His sneakers, jeans, and green polo shirt were drenched in blood. Silva said a person next to him was shot in the head.

Highway Memorial

Enrique Ortez, the acting Honduran foreign minister, said the military didn’t fire on the crowd and that the shots came from Zelaya supporters, new agency EFE reported.

Green Cross and Red Cross rescue workers carried away a victim with blood covering his head. Survivors built a makeshift memorial by a pool of blood on the highway median outside the airport.

“Stop this massacre,” Zelaya said in an interview from his plane on Telesur, a television network owned by Venezuela’s government. At least eight were injured, Oscar Fernandez, head of the Honduran Red Cross, said in a phone interview.

As the plane approached the airport, people pointed to the sky and started cheering. It circled once and approached the airport a few hundred feet above the ground, banking slightly. The government blocked the runway with ranks of police and parked vehicles. The pilot, speaking on Telesur without giving his name, said it was unsafe to land. The plane flew to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.

‘Moral Difference’

“There’s a big moral difference between a president who abandons his country and one who wants to return and can’t,” Correa said before leaving Washington. The Micheletti government’s refusal to let Zelaya enter would be “a big moral defeat,” he said.

The crisis provoked what Chavez called “the hour of the furnaces” for the trade bloc he founded, known as the Alba, short for the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our Americas. Chavez, who calls himself a revolutionary socialist, has formed commercial and political alliances with the leaders who gathered to support Zelaya.

Alba countries Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia were among those pressing for Zelaya’s return. Telesur, funded by Chavez, provided continuous coverage of pro-Zelaya marches over the past week even as its signal was cut in Honduras and some of its reporters detained.

Governments throughout the Americas condemned the coup, voting 33-0 to suspend founding member Honduras from the OAS. Some didn’t encourage Zelaya to return. Peter Kent, Canada’s minister of state of foreign affairs in charge of the Americas, said the “time is not right” yet.

To contact the reporters on this story: Steven Bodzin in Caracas at sbodzin@bloomberg.net; Andres R. Martinez in Tegucigalpa at amartinez28@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 6, 2009 16:53 EDT