Several dead in operation to arrest Venezuela pilot

CARACAS: Several people including operation to capture a helicopter pilot who bombed Venezuela’s Supreme Court during anti-government protests last year, the interior ministry said on Monday (Tuesday in Manila).

A ministry statement said members of a “terrorist cell” were killed captured, but did not say whether the pilot, Oscar Perez, was among the dead or detained.

Six police were wounded, President Nicolas Maduro told lawmakers.

The cell had planned to set off a car bomb outside the embassy of “a beloved and prestigious country,” Maduro said.

Reports said Perez and associates were holed up for hours in a house 25 kilometers northwest of Caracas during the raid.

Perez released videos on Instagram in which he said authorities were trying to kill him and his people even though they wanted to surrender.

Press reports said Perez did in fact die in the raid.

At the height of street protests against Maduro last June, Perez over Caracas in a police helicopter and dropped four grenades on the Supreme Court before opening were no casualties.

Perez has been on the run since Venezuelan authorities issued an arrest warrant through Interpol after accusing him of a “terrorist attack.”

The 36-year-old former elite po taunted the government during his time in hiding, saying he was - ny” and the “narco-dictatorship.”

He urged Venezuelans “not to lose heart. Fight, take to the streets, it is time we are free.”

Two weeks after the attack on the Supreme Court, Perez—at the time Venezuela’s most-wanted man— turned up at a Caracas ceremony to commemorate those who had died in the wave of anti-government protests.

In all, 125 people were killed between April and July as authorities used force to put down protests to unseat Maduro.

out and the socialist president prevailed, despite a staggering crisis caused by falling oil prices,

‘Heavily armed’

“These terrorists, who were heavily armed with high-caliber weapons, - sible for their capture,” the interior ministry statement said.

It said those who resisted had been killed.

The police were “attacked vio- lently” when they were negotiating the surrender of Perez’s group, it said, adding that they had “tried to detonate a vehicle loaded with explosives.”

Agence France-Presse journalists trying to reach the area saw an army tank, special forces and ambulances rush to the scene.

Perez said in a video released on Twitter earlier Monday that he and his companions were surrounded and pinned down by police marksmen at El Junquito on the outskirts of Caracas.

- nade launchers. We said we are going to surrender but they do not want to let us surrender. They want to kill us,” a bloody-faced Perez said in one of the videos posted online.

- cer, is seen with other men in one of the videos, some of them armed.

He said they were being besieged by snipers.

“We will die standing up defending our land, never kneeling before the tyrants,” another of Perez’s messages said.

The vice president of the ruling Socialist party, Diosdado Cabello, said on Twitter the Police Special Action Force (FAES) had launched the operation to arrest Perez.

He said the security forces had - eration.