Venezuela’s Maduro Survives Assassination Attempt
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he survived an assassination attempt involving explosive drones on Saturday thanks to God, the people and the country’s armed forces, and he blamed Colombia and the United States for what he called a right-wing plot to kill him.
In a televised speech hours after his address to a military event in Caracas was cut short by apparent explosions, Maduro said “everything points” to a right-wing plot that initial investigation suggested originated in neighboring Colombia. Several perpetrators were caught, he said, without elaborating, Reuters reported.
“That drone was coming for me but there was a shield of love,” Maduro said. “I am sure I will live for many more years.”
A little-known group called the “National Movement of Soldiers in T-shirts” claimed responsibility for the attack. In a series of posts on social media, the group said it had planned to fly two drones but that snipers shot them down.
“We demonstrated that they are vulnerable. We didn’t have success today, but it’s just a question of time,” said the group, which says it was founded in 2014 to bring together all of Venezuela’s “groups of resistance.”
Maduro won a new six-year term in May but his main rivals disavowed the election and alleged massive irregularities.
Venezuela is suffering under the fifth year of a severe economic crisis that has sparked malnutrition, hyperinflation and mass emigration.
Maduro named Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos as being behind the attack, but gave no evidence to back that up.
“The name of Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack ... the initial investigations point to Bogota,” Maduro said.
A Colombian government source said Maduro’s allegation was “absurd” and that Santos was celebrating his granddaughter’s baptism on Saturday. “He is not thinking of anything else, least of all bringing down foreign governments,” the source said.
During the incident, Maduro was speaking about Venezuela’s economy in an address when audio of the live television coverage was suddenly cut off.
Maduro and others on the podium looked up startled and the cameras panned to soldiers who had been lined up in formation in the street. Scores of them ran in panic away from one area.
Photographs on social media appeared to show bodyguards shielding Maduro with black bulletproof panels. A photograph also showed an injured military official clutching his bloody head and being held up by colleagues.
Maduro said initial investigations indicated that “several of those intellectually responsible and the financiers of this attack live in the United States, in the state of Florida.”
A senior State Department official said: “We’ve heard the reports coming out of Venezuela. We are carefully following the situation.”
Last year, a rogue Venezuelan police officer hijacked a helicopter and fired at government buildings in what he said was an action against a dictator. The officer was hunted down and killed by Venezuelan forces.
