Nicaraguan national police and armed pro-government civilians laid siege Tuesday to and then retook a symbolically important neighborhood that has recently become a center of resistance to President Daniel Ortega's government. Government forces began advancing on the Monimbo neighborhood of Masaya city before dawn and had largely regained control of it by the afternoon for the first time since massive protests against Ortega's government began in mid-April. Youths fired homemade mortars from behind barriers of stacked paving stones pried from streets lined by single-story homes and artisan workshops in the town about 16 miles southeast of the capital, Managua.