MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuelan opposition leader's wife fears for his life

Guaidó suffered minor injuries and pledged to keep up the fight against Maduro's government

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó's wife has expressed her concerns that her husband might end up killed following an attack Saturday which was believed to be “an attempt against his life.”

“My greatest fear is that Juan ends up in jail or murdered and that happens frequently in Venezuela,” said after the violent attack by some 60 armed Chavist men and women in the state of Cojedes during a meeting with opposition leaders.

“It was an armed violent ambush led by [ruling] PSUV leaders. An attempt on his life and that of the team,” said Rosales in a radio interview with Argentine broadcaster Metro. “This is the third time in a week. In Zulia, they ambushed them twice,” she went on.

Rosales insisted President Nicolás Maduro's regime uses “state police to persecute, to assassinate.” She added that they “are harassment and persecution police, to generate anxiety, to follow us and know what we do 24 hours a day.”

Former PSUV candidate for the governorship of Cojedes, Nosliw Rodríguez, was said to be one of those who commanded the attack against Guaidó

Former anti-Chavez Congressman Freddy Guevara showed photographs in which he identifies some of the participants in the violent events, as well as of Guaidó himself leaving a building with his shirt torn. ”I see confused people (and unfortunately people spreading that): Guaidó was not taken out of a restaurant by disgruntled Venezuelans. Nor was it a restaurant (it was a meeting space). And they were not ordinary citizens but from the regime. It was an ambush,“ Guevara claimed.

A statement from the opposition also denounced that people traveling with Guaidó had ”received several bullet impacts“ in a ”violent and cowardly attack,” for which it blamed militants of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and “armed collectives.”

Guaidó himself said in a separate that he did not suffer any serious injuries and that he was already back in Caracas. He added Venezuelans will remain in the streets claiming their rights.

In a message on his Twitter account, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said his country was “deeply concerned” that Guaidó “has been attacked for the second time” in two weeks in Venezuela. “We condemn this escalation of acts of violence, harassment and intimidation against interim President Juan Guaidó and all who defend democracy,” Blinken said.

US State Department's Undersecretary for Latin America, Brian Nichols, expressed his concern for the event, which he considered an “atrocious attack” in which the lives of several people were put at risk, while Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary-General Luis Almagro also condemned the attack on Guaidó.