Venezuelan security forces skirmished with protesters along the Colombian border in clashes over aid shipments between President Nicolas Maduro's government and U.S.-backed opponents trying to drive him out of power.
National Guard soldiers Saturday fired tear gas and plastic pellets at supporters of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who were trying to persuade them to defect and permit tons of food and medicine into the country. The protesters set up barricades of burning tires and hijacked buses, setting them aflame. Others confronted soldiers who formed a wall with plastic shields, pleading with them to let their countrymen march.
"This bridge of unity will help Venezuelans come together," Guaido said at a news conference Saturday morning next to a warehouse of supplies in Cucuta, Colombia. "Humanitarian aid is on its way to Venezuela in a peaceful manner to save lives."
The aid initiative is a watershed in Guaido's campaign to replace Maduro, which began last month. The U.S. says political reforms must follow, while traditional aid groups have shunned the effort as politically tainted.
On Friday, a smaller attempt to deliver aid ended in bloodshed: Venezuelan soldiers killed at least one woman and injured a dozen at the remote southern border with Brazil. Fears ran high that the operation Saturday would end in more, possibly wider, violence.
Saturday's flashpoint is a stretch of near-dry riverbed on the Venezuelan frontier near Cucuta. It's crossed by four narrow international bridges over which Guaido plans to start delivering hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to the near-starving nation. Others will attempt to bring food and medicine from Brazil.
U.S. sanctions on the oil industry, Venezuela's only source of hard currency, threaten further suffering in a nation wracked by hyperinflation and hunger. The sanctions are part of a two-pronged approach by Guaido and his U.S. supporters �� strip Maduro of cash to buy even the scraps of food he's been distributing to citizens, and then ride to the rescue with critical supplies.
On Saturday in Caracas, opposition protesters descended on La Carlota military base. And in Pacaraima, Brazil, Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said two trucks carrying medicine and food will try to cross the border and that the nation's "legitimate government" �� Guaido's �� would be responsible for distributing it. "We don't expect any conflict but the army will be ready should anything happen," he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said all options are open if Venezuela continues to block the supplies. Vice President Mike Pence travels to Colombia Monday to meet with President Ivan Duque and others "to define concrete steps that support the Venezuelan people and a transition to democracy," his office said.
This weekend's confrontations cap a monthlong run of protests and sanctions aimed at unseating Maduro, the heir to President Hugo Chavez. After Guaido invoked Venezuela's charter on Jan. 23 to declare himself head of state, the U.S. urged other nations to recognize him as president.
On Friday, the U.S. State Department called on Venezuelan authorities to allow the stores of rice, beans, sugar and salt to enter. It said the supplies massed near the border in Boa Vista, Brazil, would feed 3,500 people in that region for 10 days and there was additional rice to feed 6,100 for a month.
Humanitarian aid is critical but "will not improve the political and economic conditions that are responsible," the department said in a statement late Friday. Venezuelan authorities should carry out "the critical economic and political reforms necessary to end the hyperinflation, supply shortages, and corruption at the heart of this crisis."
Maduro has closed international entries and ordered security forces to bar the supplies, saying they're part of plot devised in Washington. Guaido, whose claim to be interim president is recognized by the U.S. and dozens of other countries, has pleaded with soldiers to stand aside and let the aid through. Until now, they've remained loyal to Maduro.
On Saturday morning, two armored military vehicles pushed back metal barriers on the Simon Bolivar Bridge between Venezuela and Cucuta, and three Venezuelan National Guard members on board deserted shortly after, running to the border. One woman pushed against a barrier was wounded and fell to the ground, bloodied. The guards were met by members of the opposition, who put their arms around them and shouted, "They're with us!"
Protesters in the Venezuelan border town of Urena began squaring off with guardsmen early Saturday. Men with shirts over their faces doused piles of tires with gasoline and set them afire. Some stormed a school where militiamen were staying, forcing them out �� injuring at least one �� and burning their uniforms.
Crowds hijacked at least two buses to use as battering rams against a line of troops blocking the bridge in that town. They set one ablaze before it ran off the road and into a building, which also caught fire.
The soldiers tried to disperse the crowds with tear gas and plastic buckshot, and armored vehicles pushed them away from the international crossing.
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(Patricia Laya contributed to this report.)
