Riddle of Venezuela ‘drone bomb’
Left-wing leader claims blast was plot to kill him... but was it a stunt to rally support?
‘Maximum punishment’
THE Venezuelan president has claimed assassins tried to kill him using drones packed with explosives on the orders of dissidents living in the United States.
Nicolas Maduro was addressing a military parade in Caracas on Saturday when he suddenly looked up and winced after hearing an explosion.
The socialist president’s wife Cilia Flores, standing beside him, also looked up and put her hand to her chest, appearing frightened.
They were surrounded by bodyguards carrying bulletproof shields and rushed off the podium at 5.30pm.
TV footage showed uniformed soldiers, who were on parade, quickly scattering from the street. Photos of the incident showed an officer clutching a bleeding head wound.
The government said seven soldiers were injured when at least two drones exploded.
Critics of the regime have suggested the apparent assassination attempt may have been staged to stoke patriotism and buoy Mr Maduro’s flagging support. And there have been reports that the explosion was actually a gas blast in a nearby building.
But the interior ministry said six suspects have been detained. One of them had a pending arrest warrant for a 2017 attack on a military base while a second had been detained in 2014 for participating in anti-government street protests.
Officials claim the dissidents used two M600 drones, each carrying 2lb of C4 explosive. This would have caused injury and damage up to 160ft away from the explosion.
One of the drones flew toward the president’s podium and the other went out of control and hit the first floor of an apartment building, the government said.
Three hours after the incident, Mr Maduro, 55, claimed a drone exploded in front of him and passionately insisted he had proof that it was an assassination attempt by opponents living in Colombia and America.
‘They attempted to assassinate me,’ he said. ‘ The first investigations show that those intellectually and financially responsible for this attack live in the US, in Florida. I hope the government of Donald Trump is willing to combat terrorist groups that want to attack presidents of peaceful nations.’
He also accused Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos of being involved.
Of the alleged plotters, he warned: ‘Justice. Maximum punishment… no forgiveness.’
But the official version of events was disputed by firefighters and eyewitnesses who said the explosion was caused by a faulty gas tank in a nearby building. Soldiers were injured by a stampede rather than an exploding drone, they said.
The official account was also undermined by absence of TV footage of the drones.
Military expert Rocio San Miguel said she believed the incident was ‘a security mistake’.
‘A military drone was destroyed by the military because they lost control of it,’ she added. ‘ It started descending and to avoid it hitting the presidential stage, they destroyed it.’ Adding to the confusion, a little-known group calling itself Soldiers in T-shirts said it carried out the attack. It added it planned to fly two drones with explosives at the president but soldiers shot them down before they reached their target.