President Nicolas Maduro has launched a nationwide security crackdown following back-to-back seaborne incursions by exiled Venezuelan soldiers allegedly aiming to topple him.
Venezuela's US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized as Venezuela's legitimate president by dozens of Western countries, denies any links to the groups.
The incidents come amid growing street violence and tensions spawned by food and fuel shortages that Venezuela's government blames on US sanctions.
In the first incident yesterday, the government's Special Actions Force (FAES) foiled what it described as an armed incursion by 10 soldiers at Macuto shortly before 4am ET yesterday. Multiple sources in Caracas and Florida tell Argus that the small boat carrying the soldiers was one of 17 groups consisting mainly of Venezuelan National Guard troops and officers who had been living in exile in Colombia and Peru before joining the coup plot.
Interior and justice minister Nestor Reverol, an active duty National Guard general, said eight of the 10 Macuto invaders were killed and two captured during a gunfight that started at 3:50am ET and raged for several hours.
The alleged leader of the Macuto incursion, Venezuelan National Guard captain Robert Colina, was among the eight reported killed by FAES forces.
Reverol said the invasion was a failed coup attempt launched from Colombia and supported by the Colombian government. Colombia's foreign ministry rejected Reverol's charges as groundless.
A second small fishing boat was intercepted today when it tried to land at Chuao, a remote beach in Aragua state. Eight men aboard the boat were taken into custody including two individuals believed to be US citizens, according to a Venezuelan Navy officer posted at the Turiamo naval base near Chuao.
The US government has not commented on the incidents.
The conspiracy to capture Maduro and deliver him to US authorities was allegedly organized by exiled Venezuelan army major general Cliver Alcala and Jordan Goudreau, a former US Army green beret medic who owns a Florida-based private security company called SilverCorp.
Alcala surrendered in March to US counter-narcotics officials in Colombia and was extradited to the US for trial on federal drug trafficking charges.
Goudreau claimed authorship of coup attempt in a video made in Colombian territory in which he claimed that units were fighting in Macuto and also had been activated "in the south, west and east of Venezuela."
Diosdado Cabello, head of Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly (ANC) said yesterday that the Maduro government's intelligence services infiltrated the Colombian-based coup conspirators months ago and knew last week that a clandestine amphibious landing at Macuto would happen on 3 May.
Cabello added that Alcala is mainly responsible for revealing the existence of the coup conspiracy because he spoke about it publicly.
