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."
In the Venezuelan border town of Urena, residents began removing yellow metal barricades and barbed wire blocking the Santander Bridge. At the Simon Bolivar Bridge, a group of aid volunteers walked up to a police line and shook officers' hands, appealing for them to join their fight. But a few hours later the volunteers were driven back with tear gas, triggering a stampede. At least two people were killed and another 21 injured in the town of Santa Elena de Uairen, near the border with Brazil.
For weeks, the US and regional allies have been amassing emergency food and medical supplies on three of Venezuela's borders. It comes a month after Guaido, in a direct challenge to Maduro's rule, declared himself interim president.
The 35-year-old lawmaker has won the backing of more than 50 governments around the world, but has been unable to cause a major rift inside the military.
As night fell, Guaido refrained from asking supporters to continue risking their lives and make another attempt to break the barricades. Instead, he said he would meet US Vice-President Mike Pence tomorrow in Bogota at an emergency meeting of mostly conservative Latin American governments to discuss Venezuela's crisis.
But he did make one last appeal to troops.
"How many of you national guardsmen have a sick mother? How many have kids in school without food," he said at a warehouse in the Colombian city of Cucuta where 600 tonnes of food and medicine have been stockpiled. "You don't owe any obedience to a sadist ... who celebrates the denial of humanitarian aid the country needs."
Guaido later tweeted that he had decided to "propose in a formal manner to the international community that we keep all options open to liberate this country which struggles and will keep on struggling".
Earlier, Maduro struck a defiant tone, breaking diplomatic relations with Colombia, accusing its "fascist" Government of serving as a staging ground for a US-led effort to oust him from power and possibly a military invasion. "My patience has run out," Maduro said, speaking at a massive rally of red-shirted supporters in Caracas.
Analysts warn that there may be no clear victor and humanitarian groups have criticised the opposition as using the aid as a political weapon.
"Today marked a further blow to the Maduro regime, but perhaps not the final blow that Guaido, the US and Colombia were hoping for," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "Threats and ultimatums from Washington directed to the generals may not be the best way to get them to flip. In fact, they are likely to have the opposite effect."
- AP
