Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez announced on Thursday, the day before that the country’s authorities had decided, to temporarily close three bridges connecting Colombia and Venezuela ahead of humanitarian aid deliveries to Venezuela.
The Venezuelan army on Friday began building up troops on the border with Colombia following instructions given by the president Nicolas Maduro.
Opposition leader and self-proclaimed “interim” president, Juan Guaido, expects humanitarian US relief aid that has been so far collected at logistics hubs in Brazil’s Roraima, Colombia’s Cucuta and on the Caribbean island of Curacao, to begin arriving in the country today (Saturday).
#23Feb|| Cumpliendo instrucciones de nuestro CJ @NicolasMaduro, Cmdte CEOFANB AJ @CeballosIchaso ordenó al Sistema Defensivo Territorial #FANB despliegue operacional en la frontera colombo venezolana para resguardar la paz y seguridad del pueblo tras cierre de la frontera. pic.twitter.com/xRBXpXstEP
— CEOFANB (@ceofanb) February 23, 2019
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro previously said that Venezuela would close the border with Brazil and was considering closing the border with Colombia. He has warned that the US and its allies were using “the pretext of delivering humanitarian aid” to try to “destroy the independence and sovereignty of the country”.
Maduro has said he will not allow such aid into the country, that the country was coping with its difficulties and that US “concerns” over Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis had been “fabricated by Washington over the last four years to justify intervening in our country”.
