Venezuelan aid convoys meet fierce resistance from security forces; 2 killed, some 300 injured

A U.S.-backed campaign to force President Nicolas Maduro from power met strong resistance Saturday from Venezuelan security forces who fired tear gas on protesters trying to deliver humanitarian aid from Colombia and Brazil, leaving two people dead and some 300 injured.

Throughout the turbulent day, as police and protesters squared off on two bridges connecting Venezuela to Colombia, opposition leader Juan Guaido made repeated calls for the military to join him in the fight against Maduro’s “dictatorship.” Colombian authorities said more than 60 soldiers answered his call, deserting their posts in often-gripping fashion, though most were lower in rank and didn’t appear to dent the higher command’s continued loyalty to Maduro’s socialist government.

In one dramatic high point, a group of activists led by exiled lawmakers managed to escort three flatbed trucks of aid past the halfway point into Venezuela when they were repelled by security forces. In a flash the cargo caught fire, with some eyewitnesses claiming the National Guardsmen doused a tarp covering the boxes with gas before setting it on fire. As a black cloud rose above, the activists — protecting their faces from the fumes with vinegar-soaked cloths — unloaded the boxes by hand in a human chain stretching back to the Colombian side of the bridge.

“They burned the aid and fired on their own people,” said 39-year-old David Hernandez, who was hit in the forehead with a tear gas canister that left a bloody wound and growing welt. “That’s the definition of dictatorship.”

International leaders including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres are appealing for the sides to avoid violence. But at least two people were killed and another 21 injured in the town of Santa Elena de Uairen, near the border with Brazil, according to local health officials.

The opposition planned to hold three simultaneous aid pushes on Saturday. Aside from Colombia, they also had hoped to deliver humanitarian assistance by sea and through Venezuela’s remote border with Brazil, which Maduro ordered closed.

Amid the sometimes-chaotic and hard-to-verify flow of information, opposition lawmakers and Guaido said the first shipment of humanitarian aid had crossed into Venezuela from Brazil — although reports from the ground revealed that two trucks carrying the aid had only inched up to the border itself.

Dueling demonstrations also took place in the capital. Government opponents, waving American flags and one of them dressed like Captain America in a nod to the Trump administration’s prominent role cornering Maduro, headed toward an air base. With the opposition mostly mobilized along the border, a much larger mass of red-shirted government supporters, some of them on motorcycles, filled streets downtown.

Venezuela’s military has served as the traditional arbiter of political disputes in the South American country, and in recent weeks, top leaders have pledged their unwavering loyalty to Maduro.

But that hasn’t discouraged young protesters like Juan David Candiales.

The 17-year-old said he sneaked out of his family’s home in Venezuela last week to help bring in the aid. Despite being shot four times in the leg with metal pellets, he raced back to the burned aid trucks late Saturday to square off with National Guardsmen one more time.

“I have to keep going back — because this is the country where I was born and it pains me,” he said. “If we can be here all night we will be here all night. I’m not going home until humanitarian aid is let into Venezuela.”

Henao reported from Urena, Venezuela. AP Writers Joshua Goodman and Scott Smith contributed to this report from Caracas, Venezuela.