Jailed Venezuelan opposition leader back under house arrest

There are also fears, said McCoy, that contagious diseases could spread across the border into neighbouring countries.

She didn’t say what lies ahead, but some fellow delegates have been pledging to target opposition lawmakers and remove chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega from office as part of their first order of business.

The government-stacked electoral council claims more than 8 million people voted in Sunday’s election for a almost all-powerful constituent assembly.

The Vatican issued an unheeded urgent appeal to Venezuela’s leaders to suspend its new Constituent Assembly which, it says, is threatening the future of the South American nation.

“Today in Venezuela there is no democracy”, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie told reporters after meeting with his counterparts from Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Moments later, the new national constituent assembly announced Ortega’s ouster. So really, it gives Nicolas Maduro a carte blanche to do pretty much whatever he wants to do.

“It’s important for us to place responsibility for this catastrophe on Maduro’s shoulders”.

She then fled the chaotic scene on a motorcycle, squeezed between two bodyguards, after one of her other guards was apparently injured.

Many in the worldwide community have rejected the assembly, including the Vatican and the European Union.

Lucena was recently put on a list of sanctioned individuals by the United States for undermining democracy in the OPEC nation.

The body of more than 530 members, virtually all of whom are Maduro supporters, loudly applauded the vote, broadcast live on state-run VTV. So far, force has worked in Maduros favor, as it did for Chavez before him: Maduro managed to win a narrow election in 2013, violent riots in 2014, the loss of the legislative in 2015, halting the recall against him as well as state and city elections in 2016 through increasingly heavy-handed repression, mass arrests, extended censorship and threats.

On Friday, assembly leader Delcy Rodriguez, a former Venezuelan foreign minister, warned that “justice will come” to some members of the opposition.

“The Holy See expresses again her profound concern for the radicalization and aggravation of the crisis in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, with the increase in the number of deaths, wounded and those who have been detained”, read an August 4 Vatican communique. “What we have is a crisis of the right-wing fascists”, said Rodriguez, in a fiery inaugural address in which she paid homage to late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s mentor and predecessor.

On Thursday, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States won’t recognize Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly because “the process was rigged from the start” and “the election lacked credible global observation”. “We respect the official government of Venezuela and President Maduro at this moment”, he stated.

The election for the assembly Rodriguez will head occurred amid months of anti-government protests that have left more than 110 dead.

There was no immediate explanation by the government but Ortega tweeted photos of the troop movements to denounce what she called an arbitrary “siege” of her office. He has no more than 20 percent public support, according to surveys by the Datanalisis polling firm, and increasingly relies on backing from the military and judicial and electoral authorities.