Venezuelan opposition says headquarters invaded as government alleges coup attempt

CARACAS, (Reuters) – A major Venezuelan opposition movement today said its headquarters had been vandalized amid ongoing tensions over a disputed presidential election, as the country’s foreign minister said the U.S. was at the forefront of what the government calls a coup attempt.

Vente Venezuela, the movement headed by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said six unidentified men wearing hoods and carrying guns overpowered its security guards overnight, entering its Caracas headquarters, taking equipment and vandalizing the office.

“We denounce the attacks and insecurity to which we are subjected for political reasons,” the movement said on social media.

Countries around the region including Brazil, Mexico and Colombia have called on Venezuela’s government to release detailed voting tallies after the elections board declared President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, the winner of a third term.

The opposition says its tally of about 90% of the votes shows Maduro’s opponent and opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez received more than double the support of the incumbent president, in line with independent polling conducted before the contest.

Vente Venezuela today released two videos showing walls daubed with black graffiti at its headquarters, a two-story house in the east of the city.

Machado, who was barred from challenging Maduro herself, is currently in hiding, she said in a opinion piece published on Thursday by the Wall Street Journal, but she is expected to appear at opposition marches called for Saturday.

At least 20 people have been killed in post-election protests have gripped Venezuela since the election, according to U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Watch.

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said on Friday that Washington was “at the forefront of a coup attempt” after the U.S. State Department a day earlier recognized Gonzalez as the election’s winner.

Gonzalez on Friday thanked the U.S. in a post on social media “for recognizing the will of the Venezuelan people reflected in our electoral victory.”

On Thursday, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, whose leaders have traditionally been friendlier with Maduro, called on Maduro’s government to “move ahead quickly” and publish detailed voting tallies.

“We are disappointed with the CNE’s delay in publishing the data,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s top foreign policy advisor, Celso Amorim, told Brazil’s RedeTV! in an interview with that aired late on Thursday.

Amorim, who met with Maduro on Monday after being sent by Lula to observe the elections, said it was up to the government to prove that the figures released by the CNE were real.

“The question is whether the vote count really corresponds to the ballot boxes, so they must show the tallies,” Amorim said. “I asked President Maduro for that in the presence of the president of the National Assembly, and he said it was a matter of two or three days.”