Looting and violence are rapidly on the rise as Venezuela enters its fifth day without power across most of the country though some reports suggest as much as 30% of power has returned to parts of the capital city Caracas.
The UK Daily Mail has published a series of shocking photographs showing the aftermath of mobs looting supermarkets in Caracas as things turn desperate. The already politically unstable Latin American country was plunged into darkness after last Thursday night all but one of 23 states suffered mass blackouts.
As reports of approaching 20 or more deaths at hospitals attempting to operate with faulty back-up generators came in over the weekend, Reuters noted, "Electricity experts said that outage was most likely due to failures in the transmission system, and that the government lacks the equipment and staff to repair them."
The scene of looting in Baruta, Caracas earlier today. Security forces arrived in large numbers and eventually gained control of the situation there. #Venezuelapic.twitter.com/W8O7nYJy8v— Resistance43v3r ⚔️ (@resist43v3r) March 11, 2019
Reuters further described "already-scarce food rotting in shops, homes suffering for lack of water and cell phones without reception."
And the Daily Mail reported "Pictures reveal that some supermarkets in the capital have been left ransacked by desperate residents as they struggle to find food."
Security personnel have been deployed throughout Caracas to prevent mass looting, though we can imagine that since reports of the water supply being impacted by the outage, people are simply reaching desperation and are attempting any way possible to endure the nightmare circumstances.
Photographs showed in some instances looters being piled into police trucks and vans — this as US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido over the weekend called for nationwide anti-Maduro protests over the failing infrastructure. Most analysts agree the electrical grid mass failure is the result of generally failing infrastructure after years of underinvestment and neglect.
Guaido now says he'll request the National Assembly to declare a "national emergency" on Monday in order to hasten the delivery of international aid into the country, an issue of contention given Maduro's repeat condemnation of 'unauthorized' US aid attempting to reach the borders.
US-backed Guaido is askeing the National Assembly "to take immediate actions with respect to the necessary humanitarian aid."
But Maduro doubled down on his prior allegations that Venezuela was actually the victim of US "sabotage" and an "electricity war," saying on Twitter Sunday: “The national electrical system has been subject to multiple cyberattacks,” and he added, “However, we are making huge efforts to restore stable and definitive supply in the coming hours.”
The country will enter its fifth consecutive day of power outages on Monday, which have also forced people to rummage through bins for food, queue to charge electronic devices using a solar panel and buy bread with 100-dollar bills after the country was hit by a fourth day of blackouts. — Daily Mail
Worse, an independent organization called Doctors for Health told Reuters that 17 hospital patients across the country have died as a result electricity outages at hospitals, and the unreliability of back-up generators.
And one unconfirmed and disputed local report said at least 80 neonatal patients died at University Hospital in Maracaibo, Zulia, over the course of the blackout. Though it remains difficult to assess or confirm such numbers, there's near universal affirmation that the crisis has hit humanitarian disaster levels, as things like ventilators and life-saving devices at hospitals fail.
Caracas has attempted to communicate official government statements about the crisis through State TV social media accounts, but much of the population now remains isolated from the outside world.
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