Miami Herald: Armed Venezuelan soldiers caught in Guyana begging for food
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA: A handful of Venezuelan soldiers — armed and in uniform — were caught in neighboring Guyana last week begging for food, local police reported, another sign of Venezuela’s deepening hunger crisis.
Guyanese Police Inspector Christopher Humphrey said he’d gone to the border along the Amacuro river, which divides the two nations, to investigate reports that the Venezuelan military was stealing food from locals. But the three soldiers he encountered — two carrying military assault rifles — said they had come to beg for meals and hadn’t harmed anyone.
Humphrey said the men had crossed into Guyana on a wooden raft and seemed genuinely hungry.
“They were desperate,” he told the Miami Herald. “They were here for some time and they showed me a can of sardines and the place where they had cooked it over a fire.”
Hunger is on the rise in Venezuela, amid triple-digit inflation and the government’s inability to import basic goods. And neighboring Colombia, Brazil and Guyana have seen a spike in Venezuelans looking for food.
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WNU Editor: I have a close friend who lives in Georgetown (capital of Guyana). He has told me that there are many homeless beggars from Venezuela in the city, and their numbers are growing dramatically. But this is the first time that I am reading a report of starving Venezuelan soldiers.