Venezuelans trapped along border after weekend unrest

Supporters of the opposition clashed over the weekend with Venezuelan security forces on the borders with Colombia and Brazil, leaving four people dead.                                 

Some Venezuelans are living in limbo across the border in Colombia, trapped after a failed effort to bring humanitarian aid into their country.

That weekend drive turned violent as supporters of the opposition clashed with Venezuelan security forces on the borders with Colombia and Brazil, leaving four people dead.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro later shut down four bridges that cross the frontier into Colombia.

So some Venezuelans who came across to volunteer in the aid shipment effort, or who work in Colombia but live in Venezuela, are suddenly trapped on the Colombian side.
One of those volunteers is Nicolasa Gil, 71, who says she does not mind having to sleep on the streets of the border town of Cucuta.

"What scares me is going over into my country, because we are safer here than there," she told AFP.
She recalled how she and other volunteers were trying to cross one of the bridges over the weekend with trucks carrying food and medicine and all hell broke loose at the midway point of the span when Venezuelan riot police intervened.

"As soon as we reached that point, they attacked us with tear gas and we had to leave the trucks. Those animals burned them," said Gil.
Gil said she had not been home to her native Venezuelan state of Merida since Saturday because she heeded opposition leader and self-declared interim president Juan Guaido's call for people to go into Colombia and bring back mainly US aid that has been stockpiled at the border.
Some 300 people were wounded in the clashes along the Colombian border.



source: AFP