Venezuela declares state of emergency

On Wednesday evening, Maduro asked Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez to arrange an urgent meeting with her Colombian counterpart to discuss paramilitary activity as well as drug trafficking in the region.

One of the busiest border crossings is closed, with the state of emergency extending across five municipalities.

The search, it said, is being carried out in an area of Tachira state “invaded” illegally by around 1,900 families, 90 percent of whose members are “of Colombian origin”.

“I will not open the border until these attacks on our economy from Colombia stop, I will not open it”, Maduro said in a televised address yesterday.

The move to beef up government forces came after three soldiers were injured in a shootout on Wednesday.

“We have reached the limit of the aggression by armed groups, of the speculators and smugglers”, Maduro said, referring to people who buy goods that are heavily subsidized by the government and then sell them across the border.

The Venezuelan government has accused the Colombian opposition, headed by senator and former president, Alvaro Uribe, of being behind a plan to destabilise the country. His critics say the nation’s economic woes, including the world’s highest inflation rate, are self-inflicted.

National Guard troops deplane from a Venezuelan Air Force Chinese-made Y-8F-100 transport aircraft (background) in La Fria, Tachira state, Venezuela, close to the Venezuela-Colombia border, on Friday.

“Closing the border creates inconveniences, bad feelings, and lots of innocent people including children have to pay the price”, he said in the city of Bucaramanga, El Tiempo newspaper reported.

Gen. Temistocles Morantes Torres said that Tachira “greatly influences the rest of the country, and by taking control of the state, we believe that it will impact the current supply of food products”, a reference to the severe shortages of food and other goods that are allegedly smuggled out of Venezuela into Colombia.