Maduro’s National Guard killed at least one Venezuelan and injured others in an aid fight near Colombia and Brazil.
In an escalation of the crisis brewing within the country, Venezuela’s National Guard, who are loyal to the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, killed at least one person and injured several others during clashes over humanitarian aid.
On Friday morning, protesters from an indigenous community in Kumarakapai, a southern Venezuelan village, tried to block military vehicles from closing off the border with Brazil by putting their bodies in the way.
Maduro’s forces shot at the protesters, according to the Washington Post, killing 42-year-old Zorayda Rodriguez and injuring at least 12 others.
Thirty other residents joined the protest after the shooting, and eventually took three soldiers prisoner. “The majority of the people support the entrance of humanitarian aid, and we want to keep our border open,” Carmen Elena Silva, a protester, told the Post. “This is help, not war… Every day more children die.”
This latest incident shows that the situation in Venezuela is growing more and more untenable by the day. The country is currently in the throes of an extreme economic crisis and humanitarian disaster — and much of it is due to the leadership of Maduro, the country’s socialist dictator.
Inflation in the country now hovers above a million percent, and could reach 10 million percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
