Wave of plunder in Venezuela

After five days without electricity

Caracas. (EFE) – Dozens of stores located in the city of Maracaibo, capital of the Venezuelan state of Zulia, have been fired during the last few hours in the middle of the electricity crisis that operates in this region rich in oil for five days without light, said witnesses. in Efe.

The looting was recorded from Sunday and continued until Monday night in several neighborhoods of the city, where about two million people live.

Violent groups broke into bakeries, supermarkets, appliance stores, shoe stores, jewelers, shopping malls and outlets of all kinds, and took away what the world is able to wear.

Several witnesses consulted by Efe badured that the looters had acted in groups and that in some cases they had confronted members of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB, militarized police) without being aware of an official report of wounded or injured. of prisoners.

These sources represent at least twenty destroyed establishments some of which were robbed by the crowd.

Many photographs and videos circulate through social networks, showing the magnitude of this wave of looting whose damage, so far, has not been quantified.

Read: Trump asks to cut aid to Latin America and save 500 million euros in Venezuela

The main employer of Venezuela, Fedecámaras, indicated through the social network Twitter that the economic sector of this federal entity has awakened "destroyed by acts of vandalism that only reinforce the economic crisis with more shortage ".

The situation was spreading to the nearby city of San Francisco, where more than 500,000 people live, and included stealing mobile phones, tools of all kinds and devices such as televisions, according to the employers.

The mayor of Maracaibo, Chavez Willy Casanova, told the national channel yesterday that the city "was at peace", despite the fact that citizens are "confronted with" the problems generated by this electrical situation ".

"Crime actors have taken advantage of these cases to try to provoke disturbances of public order and terrorist acts on the territory (…) and we treat them with great firmness," he said. stated without further details.

Zulia's electrical service started recovering from Monday night problems, after more than 100 continuous hours without electricity and until now, much of Maracaibo is still dark.

According to Nicolás Maduro's government, these failures are due to a cyber-attack perpetrated by the United States and local opponents and have made the electricity system of almost the whole country unstable since Thursday at 9:00 pm Paris time.

Twenty other stores have been looted in recent days in the states of Anzoátegui (east), Mérida (west) and the city of Baruta, where the authorities have badured Efe of these jurisdictions.

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