THE embattled president of Venezuela has ordered the vast border with Brazil to be closed, just days before opposition leaders plan to import humanitarian aid he has refused to accept.
Nicolas Maduro, pictured below, said he is also considering shutting the border with Colombia.
The president made the announcement on state TV surrounded by military commanders.
Opposition leaders led by Juan Guaido are vowing to bring in US supplies of emergency food and medicine. Maduro denies a humanitarian crisis, accusing the US of leading a coup to remove him from power and using the “show” of supposed humanitarian aid as military intervention.
“What the US empire is doing with its puppets is an internal provocation,” Maduro said.
“They wanted to generate a great national commotion, but they didn’t achieve it.”
The president has blocked air and sea travel between Venezuela and nearby Dutch Caribbean island Curacao, where aid was being stockpiled.
A caravan of vehicles carrying Guaido left the Venezuelan capital of Caracas early on Thursday, heading towards the Colombian border amid efforts to import aid stored in the city of Cucuta starting tomorrow.
The socialist president is under a mounting challenge by Guaido, who has declared himself acting president on the grounds that Maduro’s re-election was invalid.
Guaido is backed by the US and dozens of nations, while Maduro is supported by Russia, China, Cuba, Turkey and many other countries. Opposition leaders also plan to bring supplies of food and medicine from Curacao and across the jungle-covered border with Brazil.
ELSEWHERE, thousands of Daesh fighters are renewing operations in Iraq, destabilising the country’s fragile security, according to US and Iraqi officials.
Hundreds of Daesh fighters have crossed the Syrian border in the past six months alone, defying US, Kurdish and allied efforts to destroy remnants of the group in Syria.
There are now thought to be between 5000 and 7000 militants in Iraq. They are bringing with them currency and light weapons, according to intelligence reports, and digging up money and arms from caches they stashed away when they controlled a vast swathe of northern Iraq. Cells operating in four northern provinces are carrying out kidnappings, assassinations and roadside ambushes aimed at intimidating locals and restoring the extortion activities that financed the group’s rise to power six years ago.
“If we deployed the greatest militaries in the world, they would not be able to control this territory,” said brigadier general Yahya Rasoul, the Iraqi army spokesman. Our operations require intelligence gathering and air strikes.
“IS is trying to assert itself in Iraq, because of the pressure it is under in Syria.”
In Syria, Kurdish-led forces backed by the US-led coalition have cornered the militants in a pocket less than one square kilometre in Baghouz, a Euphrates River village near the 600-kilometre border.
The Iraqi army has deployed more than 20,000 troops to guard the frontier, but militants are slipping across, mostly to the north of the conflict zone, in tunnels or under the cover of night. Others are entering Iraq disguised as cattle herders.
MEANWHILE, India has said it is building dams to stop its share of water from flowing into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as it seeks to punish its neighbour over an attack on soldiers that killed 40 people. India said it will harness its share of unused water from three rivers to aid Indian states.
Pakistan, a country of 200 million people with a largely agriculture-based economy, fears India may tamper with the 1960 Indus Water Treaty, brokered by the World Bank, which calls for the unimpeded flow of three other rivers through Kashmir and further into Pakistan. The treaty has worked despite three wars between the two countries since 1947.
AND finally, Japan’s gaffe-prone Olympic minister has publicly apologised for arriving three minutes late to a parliamentary meeting. Yoshitaka Sakurada was accused of disrespecting his office.
Only last week, he apologised after saying he felt let down by Olympic hopeful Rikako Ikee announcing she had leukaemia.
The former cyber security minister also admitted last year he had never used a computer.
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