Colombians leaving Venezuela are helped by Colombian policemen and soldiers as they cross the bordering Tachira River to Cucuta, Colombia. Hundreds of Colombians are fleeing Venezuela, opting to leave the country with their belongings rather than be deported empty-handed like more than 1,000 people sent home in an escalating border crisis.
AFP/Carcacas
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro escalated his country’s spat with Colombia on Friday by expanding the partial closure of their shared border to four new frontier towns.
The countries have been locked in a diplomatic row since Maduro closed part of the border last week after unidentified assailants attacked a Venezuelan anti-smuggling patrol, wounding three soldiers and a civilian.
Maduro blamed the attack on right-wing paramilitaries from Colombia.
He accused the neighbouring country of waging “an attack on Venezuela’s economy” - a reference to the rampant smuggling of heavily subsidised food and other goods out of Venezuela, where more than 5mn Colombians live.
In the aftermath of the attack, Venezuela deported more than 1,000 Colombian nationals, prompting thousands more to flee to avoid being sent home without their families or belongings.
Upping the ante again a day after the two countries recalled their ambassadors, Maduro extended the border closure, which originally applied to a heavily trafficked stretch of border comprising six towns.
“To clean up paramilitary activity, crime, smuggling, kidnapping and drug trafficking, I have decided to close the border for zone number two in the state of Tachira,” he said in a fiery speech in Caracas.
He said he was sending 3,000 troops to “search high and low for paramilitaries, even under rocks.”
The porous, 2,200-km (1,400-mile) border has long been rife with guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as drug gangs and smugglers.
The Colombian gangs include the remnants of right-wing paramilitary groups that once fought the guerrillas but were disbanded a decade ago.
Maduro blames Colombian smuggling for severe shortages of basic goods in Venezuela, a problem that fuelled violent protests in the country last year.
Venezuela has long used its oil wealth to fund price controls that keep goods like rice and toilet paper up to 10 times cheaper than in Colombia.
But it is also in the grips of crippling shortages, now exacerbated by tumbling oil prices.
