A senior Venezuelan official has said his country’s troops were not in Colombia when they died in clashes with paramilitaries near the border.
Authorities from the two countries are continuing to give differing accounts of Friday’s incident, worsening already tense relations. The Venezuelans say they fired on the right-wing paramilitaries when they refused to stop at a border post. But Colombia says its neighbour’s troops crossed into its territory. Television pictures filmed shortly after Friday’s confrontation showed fuel tanks in a Colombian village on fire and houses hit by bullets. But the Venezuelan ambassador in Bogota, Carlos Rodolfo Santiago, issued a strong denial that soldiers or aircraft from his country had gone into Colombia. The Venezuelans insist they acted against the paramilitaries, who are outlawed by the Colombian Government, on the Venezuelan side of the border. Full Story
