AFP, Urena, Venezuela :
A high-risk operation to get humanitarian aid into Venezuela descended into deadly chaos Saturday afterPresident Nicolas Maduro’s security forces fired on demonstrators and aid trucks were set ablaze.
Two people, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in clashes with security forces that left more than 300 people wounded at various border crossings.
Despite a blockade by Maduro, opposition leader Juan Guaido had set a Saturday deadline for the delivery of food and medical aid stockpiled in Colombia and Brazil. Aid is also being held on the Caribbean island of Curacao.
Humanitarian aid, much of it from the United States, has become the centerpiece of the standoff between Maduro and Guaido, the 35-year-old leader of Venezuela’s National Assembly who declared himself interim president exactly one month ago.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States “will take action” as he condemned violence perpetrated by Maduro’s “thugs.”
Guaido, meanwhile, announced he would participate in Monday’s Lima Group meeting in Bogota, and called on the international community to be prepared for “all possibilities” with regard to Maduro.
The country is gripped by a humanitarian crisis that has seen poverty soar during a prolonged recession and hyperinflation.
A boat carrying aid from the US territory of Puerto Rico had to turn back after receiving a “direct threat of fire” from Venezuela’s military, Governor Ricardo Rossello said, calling the move a “serious violation against a humanitarian mission” that is “unacceptable and outrageous.”
Hundreds of volunteers, many clad in white, were frustrated in their attempts to collect the aid at the Colombian border, pinned back by Maduro’s security forces.
Since dawn, protesters in the border towns of Urena and San Antonio were
held at bay by the Venezuelan National Guard firing tear gas and rubber
bullets.
Gunshots could be heard in the streets of Urena during hours of rioting. Civil defense officials in Colombia said at least 285 people had been injured in clashes at border bridge crossings. Colombia also ordered aid trucks to return from the border after the violence.
Most were Venezuelan nationals who were trying to cross with aid parcels when they were pushed back by Venezuelan forces.
But the most serious incident came hundreds of miles (kilometers) away, at the Santa Elena de Uairen crossing point on the southern border with Brazil where the killings took place.
Another 31 people were wounded when troops blocking the entry of aid opened fire on civilians hoping to gather it, according to rights group Foro Penal.
“They are massacring the people of Venezuela in Santa Elena de Uairen and San Antonio, where from seven o’clock in the morning they did not allow Venezuelans to gather to bring in humanitarian aid,” Guaido told reporters in Cucuta, Colombia, where he was coordinating the aid operation.
Maduro’s supporters halted and set ablaze two trucks loaded with aid driven through barricades on a border bridge, sending a pall of black smoke into the sky over the Santander crossing linking Cucuta and Urena.
“People are saving the bulk of what’s on the first truck, and looking after the humanitarian aid that Maduro the dictator ordered burned,” opposition lawmaker Gaby Arellano told reporters.
