Troops loyal to President Nicolas Maduro turned back foreign aid convoys from Venezuela’s border using teargas and rubber rounds on Saturday, killing two protesters and putting his socialist government on a collision course with Washington.
Trucks laden with U.S. food and medicine for Venezuela returned to warehouses in Colombia after opposition supporters failed to break through lines of troops, leaving dozens of demonstrators injured. Witnesses said masked men in civilian clothes also shot at protesters with live bullets.
Angered by the Colombian government’s support for opposition leader Juan Guaido, Maduro said he was breaking diplomatic relations with Bogota and gave its diplomatic staff 24 hours to leave the country.
Guaido, who most Western nations recognise as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, had given a personal send-off to Saturday’s convoy carrying aid from the Colombian city of Cucuta.
The opposition had hoped Venezuelan soldiers would baulk at turning back supplies desperately needed in the country, where a growing number of its 30 million people suffer from malnutrition and treatable diseases.
But while some 60 members of the security forces defected on Saturday, according to Colombian authorities, the lines of National Guard soldiers at the frontier crossings held firm, firing tear gas at the convoys.
At the Urena border point, two aid trucks caught fire, sending plumes of dark smoke into the air as crowds raced to try to save the boxes of supplies, a Reuters witness said.
Guaido, speaking later from Colombia, said he would keep demanding Maduro let the aid in and would seek other routes. He said he would attend a meeting of the regional Lima Group of nations in Bogota on Monday with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.
“Today the world saw in minutes, in hours, the worst face of the Venezuelan dictatorship,” Guaido said, alongside Colombian President Ivan Duque. “We saw a man who doesn’t feel pain for his Venezuelan people, who ordered the burning of necessary food for the hungry.”
Maduro denies his oil-rich nation has any need of aid and accuses Guaido of being a coup-mongering puppet for U.S. President Donald Trump. Washington has warned it could seek to impose tough new sanctions on Venezuela at Monday’s summit if Maduro blocked the aid shipments.
“What do the Venezuelan people think of Donald Trump’s threats? Get your hands off Venezuela. Yankee go home,” Maduro told a rally of red-shirted, flag-waving supporters in the capital, Caracas. “He is sending us rotten food, thank you!”
Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton said on Twitter that countries still supporting Maduro “should take note of what they are endorsing”, in a thinly veiled rebuke to China and Russia.
