ONE KILLED, 12 INJURED IN VENEZUELA AID SHOW DOW N.
Venezuelan soldiers clash with civilians
CUCUTA, COLOMBIA • A woman was killed and dozens injured in Venezuela Friday in the first deadly clash over the opposition’s attempts to bring in emergency food and medicine that President Nicolas Maduro says isn’t needed and has vowed to block.
Emilio Gonzalez, mayor of the Venezuela town of Gran Sabana, near the border with Brazil, identified the shooting victim as Zoraida Rodriguez, who was a part of an indigenous group that clashed with the Venezuela National Guard and army a day after Maduro ordered the border with Brazil closed.
Television news showed images of three injured men on gurneys being treated for bloody wounds.
Gonzalez said soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas.
The violence came just hours before duelling concerts were to begin on the country’s western border with Colombia, where much of the U.S.-supplied aid is being stored in a warehouse.
British billionaire and adventurer Richard Branson is sponsoring a Live Aid-style concert featuring dozens of musicians including Latin rock star Juanes on one side of a crossing that Colombian officials have renamed the “Unity Bridge,” while Maduro’s socialist government is promising a threeday festival deemed “Hands Off Venezuela” on the other.
“If we can take people to space why is it so hard to take people out of poverty?” Branson said, opening the concert before a cheering crowd. “We must break the impasse and end the humanitarian crisis.”
Maduro denies any humanitarian crisis exists, and the plan to bring in aid is one of the most ambitious — and potentially dangerous — that the opposition has attempted since opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January.
Six hundred tons of aid, largely donated by the U.S., has been sitting in a storage facility at what is widely known as the Tienditas International Bridge for two weeks, and more aid continued to arrive on Friday, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Even as several million Venezuelans flee and those who remain struggle to find basic goods like food and antibiotics, Maduro contends the aid is a ploy by the Trump administration to overthrow his government. The military has placed a large tanker and two containers in the middle of the bridge to block it.