Protesters in Venezuela clashed with security forces after electoral authorities declared that Nicolas Maduro had won re-election as the South American nation’s president.
Thousands of people hit the streets of the national capital Caracas on Monday evening and marched towards the presidential palace to protest against what they claimed was a disputed election result.
They were blocked by the police who fired rubber bullets and teargas to disperse the protesters.
A man fired a gun as the protesters marched through the city’s financial district but no one was hurt, Associated Press reported.
A video from the capital showed tires burning on the roads as the protesters chanted “freedom, freedom” and called for the government’s downfall.
In the impoverished Petare neighbourhood, masked people tore down campaign posters of the president hung on lamp posts as heavily armed security forces stood just a few blocks away.
The National Electoral Council declared Mr Maduro of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela the winner of the election, giving him his third six-year term.
The opposition disputed the claim, sparking protests.
Mr Maduro’s main challenger Edmundo Gonzalez and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado claimed that they won over 70 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s election, without offering any evidence.
The electoral council’s official result gave the president 51 per cent of the vote and Mr Gonzalez 44 per cent.
“I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” Mr Gonzalez said as dozens of opposition supporters cheered outside his campaign headquarters. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.”
Ms Machado claimed the tally sheets showed Mr Maduro and Mr Gonzalez received about 2.7 million and 6.2 million votes, respectively.
The electoral council had not yet released the tally sheets for each of the 30,000 voting machines. Its website was down and it remained unclear when the tallies would be available.
“We have never been moved by hatred. On the contrary we have always been victims of the powerful,” Mr Maduro said in a nationally televised ceremony celebrating his re-election.
“An attempt is being made to impose a coup d’etat in Venezuela again of a fascist and counter-revolutionary nature. We already know this movie, and this time, there will be no kind of weakness.”
The president said Venezuela’s “law will be respected”.
The election was seen as the toughest challenge yet for Mr Maduro who has been in power since the death of his mentor Hugo Chavez in 2013.
He survived a violent coup attempt, widely seen to have been backed by the United States, in 2019.
Washington, as part of its efforts to oust Mr Maduro from power in the oil-rich country, has imposed crippling sanctions on Venezuela that have devastated its economy and reportedly killed over 40,000 people by making it harder for ordinary citizens to access food, medicine and medical equipment.
The US, along with several other Western nations, have held off recognising the latest election result, while Peru and Uruguay have withdrawn diplomats from Caracas.