A crackdown is underway after Venezuela’s president was attacked with exploding drones

Six people were arrested Sunday over an apparent assassination attempt on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro using explosive-laden drones.

Analysts warn the arrests are likely to be just the start of a brutal crackdown in response to the embarrassing security breach.

The socialist leader, who is presiding over an escalating economic and humanitarian crisis, was giving a speech at a military event in the capital Caracas Saturday evening when two DJI M600 drones, each carrying a kilogram of C-4 explosive, flew near his podium. The military knocked one drone off-course electronically, and the other crashed into a nearby apartment building, Interior Minister Nestor Luis Reverol said Sunday, describing it as a terrorist attack.

Pandemonium broke out as the devices exploded, with bodyguards scrambling to cover Maduro with shields. Hundreds of soldiers gathered for the event ran for cover.

Maduro’s government has blamed the attack on an international plot involving local militants, supported by Colombia’s outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos, and dissident networks based in Miami. Reverol said one of the six arrested had an outstanding warrant for an alleged role in an August 2017 attack on a military base in Valencia. Another had been previously arrested during anti-government protests in 2014.

An obscure group called the “Soldiers in T-shirts” claimed responsibility for the attack on social media, saying the military had shot down its drones.

“We demonstrated that they are vulnerable. We didn’t have success today, but it’s just a question of time,” the group said.

Colombia has denied any involvement in the plot, while U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said Sunday that if Venezuela had any hard information on a U.S. link to the attempted assassination, it should hand it over.

Diego Moya-Ocampos, senior analyst for the Americas at IHS Country Risk, said it was difficult to independently verify who was behind the attack. But the embarrassing optics of the incident, which had highlighted the vulnerability of the government’s security apparatus, meant a hardline response from Maduro’s government was very likely.

“We saw soldiers breaking rank, fleeing the scene, terrorized,” he told VICE News. “The government is highly likely to respond with a purge within the security apparatus, and probably stage a crackdown against opposition and union groups which have been staging protests in the past month.”

He said little was known about the “Soldiers in T-shirts,” a group which had first announced its existence on social media during anti-government protests in 2014, and had later expressed support for Oscar Perez, a rogue police officer who commandeered a helicopter to launch an attack on government buildings last year. Perez and several of his associates were later killed in a gun battle after more than six months on the run.

If the assassination attempt was indeed the work of a radical Venezuelan militant group, Moya-Ocampos said, the attack would show an increased capability of such cells, and make further attacks more likely, raising the risk of a low-level insurgency.

Maduro, a former bus driver who sees himself as continuing the socialist revolution of his mentor and predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, has faced growing opposition as the country struggles with crippling hyperinflation, and dire food and medicine shortages. He won re-election for another six-year term in May in a deeply-flawed vote which the opposition, whose top candidates were barred from running, decried as a farce.

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“The government is increasingly shutting down any means of a peaceful democratic solution,” said Moya-Ocampos. “Because it’s impossible to push for a political or negotiated solution, opposition groups are turning to political violence as the only way to force regime change.”

Cover image: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers a speech during a ceremony to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the National Guard in Caracas on August 4, 2018 day in which Venezuela's controversial Constituent Assembly marks its first anniversary.(JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images)