Clean up begins on Venezuela-Colombia border after unrest

Venezuelan migrants on Sunday helped clean debris from a bridge where troops loyal to President Nicolas Maduro a day earlier fired tear gas on activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid in violent clashes that left two people dead and some 300 injured.

Colombian President Ivan Duque reinforced security around two international bridges near the city of Cucuta and ordered them closed for 48 hours to allow for the clean-up effort.

He said that acts of "barbarism" committed by Maduro's troops in blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid required a forceful international response something that could come as early as Monday, when U.S. Vice President Mike Pence travels to the Colombian capital for an emergency summit on Venezuela with foreign ministers from more than a dozen mostly conservative Latin American and Caribbean states.

"Yesterday the dictatorship sealed its moral and diplomatic defeat before the eyes of the world," said Duque after surveying damage on the Simon Bolivar bridge.

Below the concrete roadway, a group of Venezuelan migrants were removing metal barriers normally used to guide foot traffic across the bridge that had been thrown into the Tachira river during Saturday's mayhem.

Maduro is blocking the U.S.-backed aid that is meant to weaken his control over the country and to enhance the standing of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized by more than 50 countries as the nation's legitimate ruler.

Across the border in Venezuela, few people were seen walking streets scattered with shattered glass and burnt trash. In the town of Urena, most businesses remained shuttered, fearing more violence from motorcycle-riding gunmen loyal to the government.

As night fell Saturday, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido refrained from asking supporters to continue risking their lives trying to break through the government's barricades at the Colombian and Brazilian borders.

But he did make one last appeal to troops to let the aid in. He also urged the international community to keep "all options open" in the fight to oust Maduro , echoing comments from the Trump administration, which has hinted it may be prepared to use military force.

"How many of you national guardsmen have a sick mother? How many have kids in school without food," he said, standing alongside a warehouse in the Colombian city of Cucuta where 600 tons of mostly U.S.-supplied boxes of food and medicine have been stockpiled.

"You don't owe any obedience to a sadist ... who celebrates the denial of humanitarian aid the country needs." Earlier, Maduro, who considers the aid part of a coup plot and has refused to let it in, struck a defiant tone, breaking diplomatic relations with Colombia, accusing its "fascist" government of serving as a staging ground for a U.S.-led effort to oust him from power and possibly a military invasion.

"My patience has run out," Maduro said, speaking at a rally of red-shirted supporters in Caracas and giving Colombian diplomats 24 hours to leave the country.

Throughout a turbulent Saturday, as police and protesters squared off on two bridges connecting Venezuela to Colombia, Guaido made repeated calls for the military to join him in the fight against Maduro's "dictatorship."
"That's the definition of dictatorship." For weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and its regional allies have been amassing emergency food and medical supplies on three of Venezuela's borders with the aim of launching a "humanitarian avalanche."