MEXICO CITY (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th February, 2019) Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said that President Ivan Duque Marquez had ordered trucks with humanitarian aid, which departed for Venezuela on Saturday, to return to the country.
"The trucks with [humanitarian] aid, with the exception of those that were burned, have been ordered to return," Holmes Trujillo said at a press conference in the Colombian border city of Cucuta on Saturday.
According to the minister, the vehicles will return to the aid collection center in Cucuta.
"Colombia and the international community acted peacefully and received in response violence from the Maduro regime," he added.
Earlier on Saturday, the Venezuelan opposition led by self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido sought to ensure deliveries of the US-sponsored humanitarian aid to the country via neighboring Brazil and Colombia, which resulted in numerous clashes. During one of the attempts to cross into Venezuela, several trucks with aid were burnt at the bridge connecting Cucuta and Venezuela.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro refuses to allow in unauthorized aid deliveries, saying that they are a ploy to topple his government. Amid Saturday's attempts to force unauthorized aid deliveries into the country, Caracas severed diplomatic and political relations with Colombia, while the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry announced that Colombian diplomats must leave the country in 24 hours.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez previously recalled that under international humanitarian law, humanitarian aid is provided in the event of natural disasters, armed conflicts and war. According to Rodriguez, claims about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country are designed to justify the invasion of Venezuela, but the people will not allow this.
