Tag Archives: Armed Forces

Ukrainian president fires head of the armed forces, citing disputes

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed the head of the armed forces, Ruslan Khomchak, his spokesman said at a briefing on Tuesday, citing tensions between the armed forces and the defense ministry.

Khomchak will be moved to a post on the national security and defense council. He will be replaced by Valery Zaluzhny, who heads the military’s northern command. Ukrainian troops have fought Russian-backed separatists in a conflict that Kyiv says has killed 14,000 people since 2014.

“Commander-in-Chief Ruslan Khomchak is leaving his post, this is the president’s decision,” Zelenskiy’s spokesman Sergii Nykyforov told a briefing.

“The president wants to see synergy between the ministry of defense and the armed forces of Ukraine, but unfortunately we do not see synergy, but on the contrary we see conflicts.”

The Ukrainian media in recent months have reported disputes between the defense ministry and Khomchak. Khomchak in March denied any rift: telling the news outlet gordon.ua: “Here is a working relationship where everyone has his own opinion, they can argue, they can discuss, they can come to something.”

Ukraine has urged its Western backers to speed up its entry into the NATO military alliance as a deterrent against Russia, though NATO members say Kyiv must reform its armed forces and tackle corruption to be able to apply.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Barbara Lewis)

India sends army to help hospitals hit by COVID-19 as countries promise aid

By Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Neha Arora

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India ordered its armed forces on Monday to help tackle surging new coronavirus infections that are overwhelming hospitals, as countries including Britain, Germany and the United States pledged to send urgent medical aid. In a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Chief of Defense Staff General Bipin Rawat said oxygen would be released to hospitals from armed forces reserves and retired medical military personnel would join COVID-19 health facilities.

And where possible, military medical infrastructure will be made available to civilians, a government statement said, as new coronavirus infections hit a record peak for a fifth day.

“Air, Rail, Road & Sea; Heaven & earth are being moved to overcome challenges thrown up by this wave of COVID19,” Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Twitter.

Modi on Sunday urged all citizens to get vaccinated and to exercise caution amid what he called a “storm” of infections, while hospitals and doctors in some northern states posted urgent notices saying they were unable to cope with the influx.

In some of the worst-hit cities, bodies were being burnt in makeshift facilities offering mass cremations.

The southern state of Karnataka, home to the tech city of Bengaluru, ordered a 14-day lockdown from Tuesday, joining the western industrial state of Maharashtra, where lockdowns run until May 1, although some states were also set to lift lockdown measures this week.

The patchy curbs, complicated by local elections and mass festival gatherings, could prompt breakouts elsewhere, as infections rose by 352,991 in the last 24 hours, with crowded hospitals running out of oxygen supplies and beds.

“Currently the hospital is in beg-and-borrow mode and it is an extreme crisis situation,” said a spokesman for the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the capital, New Delhi.

FIRE

Following a fire at a hospital in the western diamond industry hub of Surat, five COVID-19 patients died after being moved to other hospitals that lacked space in their intensive care units, a municipal official told Reuters.

Television channel NDTV broadcast images of three health workers in the eastern state of Bihar pulling a body along the ground on its way to cremation, as stretchers ran short.

“If you’ve never been to a cremation, the smell of death never leaves you,” Vipin Narang, a political science professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, said on Twitter.

“My heart breaks for all my friends and family in Delhi and India going through this hell.”

On Sunday, President Joe Biden said the United States would send raw materials for vaccines, medical equipment and protective gear. Germany joined a growing list of countries pledging supplies.

In Moscow, which expects 50 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine to be made each month in India this summer, a Kremlin spokesman expressed concern over the situation.

India, with a population of 1.3 billion, has an official tally of 17.31 million infections and 195,123 deaths, after 2,812 deaths overnight, health ministry data showed, although health experts say the figures probably run higher.

The surge in infections hit oil prices amid worries about a fall in fuel demand in the world’s third-biggest oil importer.

RALLY BACKLASH

Several cities have ordered curfews, while police enforce social distancing and mask-wearing. Politicians, especially Modi, have faced criticism for holding rallies during state election campaigns that draw thousands into packed stadiums.

About 8.6 million voters were expected to cast ballots on Monday in the eastern state of West Bengal, in the final phases of a contest set to wrap up this week. Also voting in local elections was the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which has been reporting an average of 30,000 infections a day.

Modi’s plea on vaccinations came after inoculations peaked at 4.5 million doses on April 5, but have since averaged about 2.7 million a day, government figures show.

Virologists said more infectious variants of the virus, including an Indian one, have fueled the resurgence.

The government told people to stay indoors and follow hygiene protocols. “Please don’t invite people into your home… It has become clearer that the transmissibility of this virus is faster,” said senior health official Vinod Kumar Paul.

Vaccine demand has outpaced supply as the inoculation campaign widened this month, while companies struggle to boost output, partly because of a shortage of raw material and a fire at a facility making the AstraZeneca dose.

However, the federal government will not import vaccines itself but expects states and companies to do so instead, in a step aimed at backing domestic manufacturers, two government officials told Reuters. [L4N2MF3ZM]

Neighboring Bangladesh sealed its border with India for 14 days, its foreign ministry said, though trade will continue. Air travel has been suspended since Bangladesh imposed a lockdown on April 14 to combat record infections and deaths.

(Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Neha Arora; Additional reporting by Sumit Khanna, Krishna Das, Anuron Kumar Mitra, Chandini Monnappa in Bengaluru, Rajendra Jadhav in Satara, Ruma Paul in Dhaka and Dmitry Antonov in Moscow; Writing by Clarence Fernandez and William Maclean; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Gareth Jones)

Mexico vows purge after ex-defense chief arrested in U.S.

By Diego Oré and Frank Jack Daniel

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s president on Friday promised to clean up the armed forces but backed its current leadership after the arrest of a former defense minister on U.S drug charges, which he called evidence some of his predecessors were “mafiosi.”

The stunning detention in Los Angeles of Salvador Cienfuegos, defense minister until 2018, took Mexico’s security establishment by surprise, senior federal sources said. U.S. authorities did not warn their counterparts of the operation.

The fall of Cienfuegos marks the first time a former defense minister has been arrested, and will have far reaching implications for Mexico’s drug war, which has been led by the armed forces for more than a decade.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged to suspend anyone inside his government implicated in the charges

“We won’t cover up for anybody,” he said, before voicing fulsome support for Cienfuegos’ successor at the head of the army and his counterpart in the navy, noting that he had personally vetted them for honesty.

Under Lopez Obrador, the armed forces have taken on more responsibility, including establishing a militarized national police force, overseeing port security and working on infrastructure projects.

The arrest comes less than three weeks before the U.S. presidential election. President Donald Trump, seeking a second term, has made clamping down on drug cartels a priority, though without major progress since he took office in 2017.

Some Mexican officials were privately shocked at the detention of Cienfuegos in Los Angeles airport, worrying it was an unprecedented U.S. intervention against a symbol of Mexican national security.

“It was totally unexpected, I never saw this coming, never, never,” said a senior police source.

Lopez Obrador quickly incorporated the arrest into his narrative that predecessors had presided over a debilitating increase in corruption in Mexico, which for years has been convulsed by often horrific levels of drug gang violence.

“If we’re not talking about a narco state, one can certainly talk about a narco government, and without doubt, about a government of mafiosi,” Lopez Obrador said.

“We’re cleaning up, purifying public life.”

‘WE’RE CLEANING UP’

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said he had received word from the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles that Cienfuegos, 72, was facing five counts of drug charges and would be transferred from Los Angeles to New York. Sources earlier told Reuters that one of the charges related to money laundering.

Lopez Obrador said he only heard about the arrest after the event, though he noted that Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Martha Barcena, had informed him about two weeks ago that there was talk of an investigation involving Cienfuegos.

There had been no open probe in Mexico on Cienfuegos and his arrest was linked to the case against Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico’s security minister from 2006-2012, who Lopez Obrador said.

Garcia Luna is on trial in New York charged with accepting millions of dollars in bribes from captured kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel, which he was meant to fight.

Like Garcia Luna, Cienfuegos had been a major figure in Mexico’s drug war, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives over the past two decades.

Under Cienfuegos, the army was accused of extrajudicial killings, including the June 2014 Tlatlaya massacre in central Mexico, where 22 drug gang members were shot dead.

A tall, imposing man, Cienfuegos fought to shield the army from potentially embarrassing investigations.

They included the kidnapping and suspected massacre of 43 student teachers in September 2014 in the city of Iguala by drug gang members in cahoots with corrupt police. Last month arrest warrants were issued in Mexico for soldiers linked to the case.

Mexico’s armed forces are generally perceived as less prone to corruption than the police. However, that image has been gradually corroded since former president Felipe Calderon first sent in the military to fight the gangs at the end of 2006.

(Reporting by Dave Graham, Diego Oré, Frank Jack Daniel and Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Tom Brown)

Taiwan denounces large-scale Chinese drills near island

By Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan denounced China on Thursday over large-scale air and naval drills off its southwestern coast which it called a serious provocation and a threat to international air traffic.

It urged Beijing to rein in its armed forces.

China, which claims democratic Taiwan as its own, has stepped up military exercises near the island, in what Taipei views as intimidation to force it to accept Chinese rule.

Yeh Kuo-hui, from Taiwan’s defense ministry’s operations and planning department, told a hastily-arranged news conference that China’s intentions could not be predicted.

“We must make all preparations for war readiness,” Yeh said, following a news briefing from senior officers describing the Chinese activities over the last two days, and showing a map of Chinese movements.

The drills took place in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, between mainland Taiwan and the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands, the ministry said. Taiwan says China sent advanced Su-30 and J-10 fighters to participate.

Taiwan Deputy Defense Minister Chang Che-ping said the drills threatened regional stability and endangered international aviation, he said.

“We once again say, do not underestimate the military’s determination to defend our home. We are confident and capable of defending the country,” Chang said.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said the government had shared “information related to China’s threat to key friendly nations”, a likely reference to the United States, Taiwan’s main arms supplier and most important international backer.

China’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment. China has held numerous military exercises up and down its coast and near the island in recent weeks.

Taiwan has this week been carrying out live-fire weapons tests off its southeast and eastern coast.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has warned of a rising risk of accidental conflict, saying communication must be maintained to cut the risk of miscalculation.

(Reporting By Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry and Timothy Heritage)

Taiwan practices ‘enemy annihilation’ after China steps up activity

FILE PHOTO: Members of the National Security Bureau take part in a drill next to a national flag at its headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan, November 13, 2015. REUTERS/Pichi C

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s armed forces carried out live fire drills on its west coast on Thursday practicing “enemy annihilation on the shore,” ahead of its main annual exercises later this month and as China steps up military activities near the island it claims.

Taiwan has complained in recent months of repeated Chinese air force patrols near it, in some cases crossing into Taiwan-controlled airspace. In April, a Chinese naval flotilla led by the country’s first aircraft carrier passed near Taiwan.

China claims the democratic island as its own territory, and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Beijing’s control. Taiwan has shown no interest in being run by China.

The drills, in a coastal area facing the sensitive Taiwan Strait, simulated fending off an attempted landing by enemy forces, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.

They involved Taiwan’s most modern fighter jet the F-16V, Apache attack helicopters, tanks and artillery, which fired live rounds, the ministry added, showing pictures of plumes of water in the sea where ordinance had hit their targets.

The drills were aimed at improving the military’s effectiveness at “enemy annihilation on the shore” and to “prevail along the coastline” to stop an enemy invasion, it said.

Taiwan later this month holds its main annual Han Kuang military exercise, which was postponed from earlier this year due to the new coronavirus.

Taiwan’s military is well-trained and well-equipped, mostly with U.S.-made weapons, and President Tsai Ing-wen has made boosting the island’s defenses a top priority since she first won office in 2016.

However Taiwan faces an increasingly formidable and far larger Chinese military, which has been undergoing its own modernization program, adding stealth fighters, aircraft carriers and anti-satellite missiles.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Exclusive: As coronavirus spreads, U.S. military to withhold some infection data

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military has decided it will stop providing some of the more granular data about coronavirus infections within its ranks, citing concern that the information might be used by adversaries as the virus spreads.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper outlined the plan in an interview with Reuters, saying that he wanted the military to keep providing broader data about infections in the armed forces, which rose by more than a third to 280 current cases on Thursday.

But Esper, a former Army secretary, said he wanted some of the more mission-specific information to be withheld to prevent compromising operational security.

“What we want to do is give you aggregated numbers. But we’re not going to disaggregate numbers because it could reveal information about where we may be affected at a higher rate than maybe some other places,” Esper said, without disclosing precisely what information would be withheld or when the plan would be implemented.

Such a decision could upend expectations about the kind of disclosure about coronavirus fallout the public can expect from the military, which has a small number of infections relative to overall forces of well over 1 million active duty troops.

Beyond daily updates on infections across the armed forces, the U.S. military has been telling the public for weeks about the locations of individual cases, from on a warship to inside the Pentagon and at overseas commands throughout the world.

Esper noted that it was one thing to disclose the case of the first U.S. soldier infected with coronavirus, which U.S. forces in South Korea did last month. But he wanted to guard against creating the expectation of regular updates everywhere.

“I’m not going to get into a habit where we start providing numbers across all the commands and we come to a point six, seven weeks from now where we have some concerns in some locations and reveal information that could put people at risk,” he said.

Esper said operational security was particularly important in places overseas where the United States is combating adversaries, noting the fight against al-Shabaab in East Africa as well as Islamic State militants in Syria or Afghanistan.

Still, he did not expect those missions to be disrupted by the coronavirus, saying “we have more than enough capability.”

“The rate of infection and its impact is not hitting us at the levels that we have any concerns about right now,” he said.

Pentagon spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said in a statement that the Department of Defense was “committed to transparency,” holding regular briefings and town halls. But she added disclosing readiness data at the unit level could be a risk.

“If at some point in the future, a commander believes that the coronavirus could affect the readiness of our strategic deterrent or strategic response forces we would understandably protect that information,” she said.

U.S. INFECTIONS OUTSTRIP ONES OVERSEAS

But Esper’s remarks appear to underscore U.S. military concerns about the potential trajectory of the virus over the coming months – both at home and abroad.

There has been a sharp increase in coronavirus cases among troops inside the United States, which officials tell Reuters have overtaken the number of cases among forces overseas in key branches of military.

The Air Force told Reuters that the United States was home to about 85 percent of its confirmed coronavirus cases among its personnel as of Wednesday. The Navy said roughly 90 percent of its cases were in the United States.

The Army declined to say how many of its personnel who tested positive were at home or overseas.

Esper did not confirm whether the number of cases was higher in the United States or abroad but noted that commanders overseas have greater ability to impose restrictions on troops and their families.

“You have far, far, far greater control of your servicemembers when you’re deployed abroad, even when you’re stationed abroad, than you do back in the United States,” he said.

Asked about the Reuters report, acting U.S. Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said on Thursday that there was a need to balance transparency with operational and security concerns.

Modly said that the Navy would follow directions from Esper, but added he believed that “being as transparent as possible is probably the best path.”

Reuters has reported that thousands of U.S. military personnel are in quarantine or in self-isolation in Europe and the Middle East due to either exposure to someone infected or recent travel to high-risk locations.

But the precise number worldwide has not been disclosed and some commands have declined to offer figures, including the U.S. military’s Southern Command.

A spokesman at the U.S. Africa Command, Air Force Colonel Christopher Karns, said his command would publicly report confirmed cases of infection but was not looking “to advertise” the number of people under quarantine.

“If advertised, numbers can be used by adversaries to their advantage,” Karns said in a statement.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Sonya Hepinstall)

India welcomes Pakistan’s return of captured pilot, as powers urge de-escalation

Demonstrators hold placards and shout slogans during a protest demanding the release of an Indian Air Force pilot after he was captured by Pakistan, in Kolkata, India, February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri

By Alasdair Pal and James Mackenzie

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Indian military officials said on Thursday they welcomed Pakistan’s planned return of a captured pilot, but refused to confirm they would de-escalate a conflict between the two nuclear powers.

The pilot, identified as Wing Commander Abhinandan, became the human face of the flare-up over the contested region of Kashmir following the release of videos showing him being captured and later held in custody.

“We are happy our pilot is being released,” said Air Vice Marshal RGK Kapoor, at a joint news conference of India’s three armed forces on Thursday evening.

He did not say when asked by reporters if India considered the return a de-escalation in the conflict.

Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhi Nandan captured by Pakistan is seen in this handout photo released February 27, 2019. Inter Service Public Relation (ISPR) Handout via REUTERS

Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhi Nandan captured by Pakistan is seen in this handout photo released February 27, 2019. Inter Service Public Relation (ISPR) Handout via REUTERS

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said the pilot would be released on Friday, to the relief of many Indians, even as his military reported that four Pakistani civilians had been killed by India firing across the disputed border in Kashmir.

“As a peace gesture we will be releasing him tomorrow,” Khan told Pakistan’s parliament on Thursday afternoon. Lawmakers thumped their desks in response.

“We will celebrate his release tomorrow,” said Vinay Bhardwaj, 34, a plumber in Nawshera, a border town in Indian-controlled Kashmir. “People are very happy about that here.”

The United States, China, European Union and other powers have urged restraint from the two nations, as tensions escalated following a suicide car bombing that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary police in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Feb. 14.

The Muslim-majority Himalayan region has been at the heart of more than 70 years of animosity, since the partition of the British colony of India into the separate countries of Muslim Pakistan and majority Hindu India.

It is divided between India, which rules the Kashmir Valley and the Hindu-dominated region around Jammu city, Pakistan, which controls a wedge of territory in the west, and China, which holds a thinly populated high-altitude area in the north.

On Tuesday, India said it hit a training camp for a Pakistan-based group who claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, and a senior government source told reporters that 300 militants had been killed.

Pakistan denies this, saying the attack was a failure and no one died, with bombs dropped on a largely empty hillside. It denies any militant camp was in the area. Local people said they had seen no sign of major casualties or significant damage, with only one man known to have been slightly hurt by the bombs.

Asked about the damage caused by Indian warplanes in Tuesday’s air strike, Kapoor said it was premature to provide details about casualties. But they said they had “credible” evidence of the damage inflicted on the camp by the air strikes.

“Whatever we intended to destroy, we did,” he said.

A train loaded with Indian army trucks and artillery guns is parked at a railway station on the outskirts of Jammu February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta

A train loaded with Indian army trucks and artillery guns is parked at a railway station on the outskirts of Jammu February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta

INTERNATIONAL CONCERN

Tuesday’s escalation marked the latest deterioration in relations between the two countries. As recently as November, Khan had spoken of “mending ties” with India.

Khan’s decision to release the pilot came after several countries offered diplomatic assistance to mediate between two countries, that have gone to war three times since their independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said after Khan’s announcement that he had spoken to the leaders of both countries and urged them to avoid “any action that would escalate and greatly increase risk”.

Earlier, U.S. President Trump said he expected “reasonably decent news” regarding the conflict between India and Pakistan, adding that the United States was trying to mediate.

“They have been going at it and we have been involved in trying to have them stop,” Trump said in Hanoi, where he was attending a summit with North Korea’s leader.

“We have been in the middle trying to help them both out.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also offered to facilitate talks between the two sides.

Khan’s office said the prime minister had spoken to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and the United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan and that both had appreciated his willingness to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

Khan has already called for talks with India to prevent the risk of a “miscalculation” between their militaries.

Earlier on Thursday, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who faces a general election in a matter of months, told a rally of supporters that India would unite against its enemies.

“The world is observing our collective will. It is necessary that we shouldn’t do anything that allows our enemy to raise a finger at us,” he said, in his first remarks since the downing of planes on Wednesday.

The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, spoke by telephone with Pakistan’s foreign minister and expressed “deep concern”.

The United States, Britain and France proposed the United Nations Security Council blacklist Masood Azhar, the head of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, the group that claimed responsibility for the Feb. 14 attack. China is likely to be oppose the move.

As a precaution amid the increased military activity, Pakistan has shut its airspace, forcing commercial airlines to reroute. Thai Airways International announced on Thursday that it had canceled flights to Pakistan and Europe, which left thousands of passengers stranded in Bangkok.

FIRING CONTINUES

Both countries said they downed enemy jets on Wednesday, though each disputed the claims of the other side, and each accused the other of breaching cease fire agreements.

Indian and Pakistani troops traded fire along the contested border in Kashmir on at least three occasions on Thursday, with the firing instigated by Pakistan every time, according to New Delhi. Pakistan said the ceasefire violations were by India.

Pakistan’s military said four civilians had been killed and two wounded in what it called a “deliberate” attack by India during the past 48 hours. A civilian on the Indian side of the border was killed in the firing on Thursday, an Indian official said.

Troops from India and Pakistan first exchanged fire on Thursday in the Poonch district for over an hour at 6 a.m., according to a statement from the Indian army. Pakistan said the firing began overnight.

Aijaz Ahmad, a resident in the Indian-controlled portion of the district, said he could hear heavy firing on Thursday afternoon.

“Loud sounds of mortar shells are being heard from a distance. Shops … are open but there is a lot of tension,” he said.

India is building more than 14,000 bunkers for families in Jammu and Kashmir state living close to the border, hoping to keep them safe near their homes rather than evacuate them.

With a general election due in India by May, a surge in nationalism from any conflict with Pakistan could become a key factor, potentially favoring Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“This has brought a pro-Modi wave all through the country,” B.S. Yeddyurappa, a BJP leader in the southern state of Karnataka, told reporters. “The effect of this will be seen in the elections.”

(This story has been refiled to fix typo in headline, no change to text)

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal, James Mackenzie, Fayaz Bukhari, Drazen Jorgic, Aditya Kalra, Krishna Das, Asif Shahzad, Saad Sayeed, Sanjeev Miglani, Neha Dasgupta and Abu Arqam Naqash; additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Michelle Nicholls; Editing by Michael Perry, Simon Cameron-Moore and Alison Williams)

Venezuela captures rogue officers after uprising at military outpost

Demonstrators stand close to the remains of a burning car used as barricade during a protest near to a National Guard outpost in Caracas, Venezuela January 21, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Mayela Armas and Brian Ellsworth

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela has captured a group of military officers who stole weapons and kidnapped four officials on Monday, the government said, hours after a social media video showed a sergeant demanding the removal of President Nicolas Maduro.

An unspecified number of officers early on Monday attacked a National Guard outpost in the Caracas neighborhood of Cotiza, a kilometer (0.6 mile) from the presidential Miraflores palace, where they met “firm resistance,” the government said in a statement. Witnesses reported hearing gunshots at about 3 a.m. (0700 GMT) in the area.

An armored vehicle is seen outside an outpost of the Venezuelan National Guards during a protest in Caracas, Venezuela January 21, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

An armored vehicle is seen outside an outpost of the Venezuelan National Guards during a protest in Caracas, Venezuela January 21, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Protesters later burned trash and a car outside the outpost, where the officers were arrested, in a sign of growing tensions following Maduro’s inauguration to a second term that governments around the world have called illegitimate.

Though the incident signals discontent within the armed forces, it appeared to involve only low-ranking officers with little capacity to force change in the hyperinflationary economy as many people suffer from shortages of food and medicine.

“The armed forces categorically reject this type of action, which is most certainly motivated by the dark interests of the extreme right,” the government said in a statement read out on state television.

Maduro was inaugurated on Jan. 10 under an avalanche of criticism that his leadership was illegitimate following a 2018 election widely viewed as fraudulent, with countries around the world disavowing his government.

Opposition leaders and exiled dissidents have called on the armed forces to turn against Maduro, which the president has denounced as efforts to encourage a coup against him.

The opposition-controlled congress’s head, Juan Guaido, said the uprising was a sign of the armed forces’ depressed state of mind. Congress was committed to offering guarantees to officers who helped with “the constitution’s reconstitution,” he said, though he did not want the military to fall into internal conflict.

“We want it to stand as one man on the side of the people, the constitution, and against the usurpation,” he said on Twitter.

In the videos that circulated on Twitter, a group of armed soldiers stood in darkness apparently at the Cotiza outpost while their leader addressed the camera and called for Venezuelans to support their revolt.

“You all asked that we take to the streets to defend the constitution. Here we are. Here we have the troops. It’s today when the people come out to support us,” said the man in the video, who identified himself as Luis Bandres.

The government said the men took two vehicles from a police station in the Macarao district in the west of Caracas before driving to a barracks in the eastern Petare slum, where they stole an arms cache and kidnapped four officials.

After they attacked the Cotiza outpost in the early hours of the morning, security forces surrounded them. In response, several dozen residents barricaded streets and set fire to rubbish as they chanted “Don’t hand yourself in,” according to Reuters witnesses. Troops fired tear gas to disperse them.

“These soldiers are right to rise up. We need a political change, because we don’t have any water or electricity,” said Angel Rivas, a 49-year-old laborer at the protest.

The United States and many Latin American nations say Maduro has become a dictator whose failed state-led policies have plunged Venezuela into its worst ever economic crisis, with inflation approaching 2 million percent.

Maduro says a U.S.-directed “economic war” is trying to force him from power.

(Additional reporting by Vivian Sequera and Corina Pons; Writing by Brian Ellsworth and Angus Berwick; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

A decade into drug gang fight, Mexican army pushes to return to base

Mexican General Alejandro Ramos Flores, head of the defense ministry's legal department, speak during an interview with Reuters at the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), in Mexico City, Mexico May 11, 2017. Picture taken May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

By Lizbeth Diaz

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – After more than a decade on the streets of Mexico battling ruthless drug cartels, the nation’s battered armed forces have thrown their weight behind a law that would force them to return to barracks and put the fight back in the hands of the police.

Since former President Felipe Calderon sent out the army to bring the gangs to heel at the end of 2006, about 150,000 people have died in the violence, including hundreds of soldiers as well as scores of police and members of other security forces.

The bloody struggle has also taken a heavy toll on the reputation of the armed forces, exposing one of Mexico’s most respected institutions to the corrupting influence of organized crime and the risk of extrajudicial killings.

General Alejandro Ramos Flores, head of the defense ministry’s legal department, told Reuters in an interview that a bill currently in congress known as the Law of Internal Security would oblige civilian authorities to retake control of fighting organized crime.

“We’re not going to resolve the problem. It’s a problem with more social and economic aspects. Everything has to converge to resolve the problem and return it to the authorities responsible for taking charge of this situation,” Ramos said.

President Enrique Pena Nieto replaced Calderon in December 2012, vowing to return the military to base, but it has remained stuck in the struggle without any strict legal formalization of the division of responsibilities between the various forces.

This has often proven a recipe for trouble.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an army source said on occasion the armed forces would arrest suspects only to have civilian authorities such as local police or prosecutors fail to appear or release them.

More damaging have been accusations that Mexican soldiers have acted outside the law, often with impunity, to kill suspects, eroding public support for the army.

This week Pena Nieto and the defense ministry called for an investigation into a video apparently showing a soldier shooting dead a prone man at point blank range following a clash with suspected criminals in the state of Puebla.

Two shootouts between federal security forces and suspected gang members in 2014 and 2015 that took more than 60 lives prompted accusations by human rights groups that federal forces had carried out extrajudicial killings.

And questions continue to dog the army over its failure to prevent the abduction and apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers by corrupt police and local gangsters in the southwestern city of Iguala in September 2014.

The government strongly disputed a report this week that said Mexico had the second-highest number of murders last year among countries considered in “armed conflicts.”

Mexico said its drug fight was not an armed conflict, that the 2016 violence numbers were not final and challenged the report’s methodology, saying that per capita other countries in Latin America had far higher murder rates.

In December, General Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s minister of defense, declared that fighting the drug war had pulled the Mexican military away from its core functions.

“We don’t want them to give us more responsibilities, or for them to give us the police’s responsibilities. We don’t want this law to foresee anything that would violate human rights,” Ramos said.

(Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)