Venezuela aid convoy moves to Colombia border, troops fire tear gas
CUCUTA, Colombia/URENA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido gave a personal send off to an aid caravan from the Colombian city of Cucuta towards the border between the two countries on Saturday, pledging to bring food and medicine to a hungry population despite President Nicolas Maduro’s resistance.
Guaido, who most Western nations recognise as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, briefly boarded one of a dozen trucks carrying US-backed humanitarian aid towards Venezuela’s borders.
Venezuelan troops just across the border fired tear gas at opposition leaders seeking to receive the aid, a Reuters witness said. Demonstrators in barricaded streets burned a bus and hurled stones at security forces to demand that Maduro allow aid into the country.
“The humanitarian aid is definitely on its way to Venezuela, in a peaceful manner, to save lives right now,” Guaido said in a news conference in Cucuta flanked by three Latin American presidents, including Colombia’s Ivan Duque.
A humanitarian aid truck also crossed the Brazilian border, an opposition leader in Caracas said. A Reuters witness said that while the truck was on Venezuelan soil, it had not passed through the customs checkpoint.
In the town of San Antonio on the Colombian border, troops repelled a group of activists including opposition legislators who had gathered on the other side of a bridge linking the two countries, according to a Reuters witness.
In the nearby town of Urena, angry protesters clashed with security forces, barricading streets with burning tires. One group torched a military uniform in a symbolic protest against the armed forces, which have stood by Maduro despite growing international isolation.
Colombia’s migration authority said four Venezuelan soldiers defected on Saturday morning.
A social media video showed the troops driving armoured vehicles across a bridge linking the two countries, knocking over metal barricades in the process, and then jumping out of the vehicles and running to the Colombian side.
“What we did today, we did for our families, for the Venezuelan people,” said one of the four men in a video televised by a Colombian news program, which did not identify them. “We are not terrorists.”
Colombian television also showed images of what it said was a Venezuelan army major recognising Guaido as president, although it did not identify him. Reuters could not immediately confirm his identity.