Hooded Assailants Raid State Electric Facility in Venezuela’s Tachira State

According to Ramon Cabeza, the director of Civil Safety in Venezuela’s Tachira state, “80 hooded youths jumped the security fence [and] threw molotov cocktails,” leaving 20 workers’ vehicles and one service vehicle severely damaged.

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Santa Elena, November 10th, 2015. (venezuelanalysis.com)- According to Ramon Cabeza, the director of Civil Safety in Venezuela’s Tachira state, “80 hooded youths jumped the security fence [and] threw molotov cocktails,” leaving 20 workers’ vehicles and one service vehicle severely damaged.

The attack occurred yesterday around 9:30 AM in San Cristobal, Tachira, at the regional headquarters of Corpoelec, the state electricity company. After the assailants set multiple cars ablaze, workers called the police and came outside with fire extinguishers.

According to Cabeza, the hooded gang first took the main Libertador Avenue, assaulting passersby and blocking the street with burring trash and tires. 

Shortly afterward, authorities arrived and reportedly brought the situation under control, though no further information on the attackers was released. 

Venezuelan officials have previously linked power shortages to similar acts of vandalization, particularly in the weeks preceding the 2013 presidential election, during which power outages became ubiquitous. 

The Western state of Tachira was also the birthplace of the 2014 barricade protests known as guarimba, which left 43 dead across the country. 

In August this year, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro called a State of Exception in the region and closed the nearby border to Colombia, in response to an alleged paramilitary attack against three border guards.