At least one soldier aimed a shotgun through the fence, Reuters pictures showed. The national guard uses shotgun cartridges filled with small rubber balls in protests.
Venezuela’s national guard is a wing of the military charged with internal public order. It mainly uses tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets to control protests that frequently escalate into riots.
On Monday, a teenager died during another protest in the same area after footage showed a national guard soldier pointing a pistol at protesters. After that incident, Maduro moved the head of the national guard to a new position looking after security in the capital, part of a reshuffle that brought several more military figures into his cabinet.
“I have ordered an investigation to see if there was a conspiracy behind this,” Maduro said earlier on Thursday, saying the men involved in Monday’s shooting had been detained.
The office of the attorney general, a former Maduro loyalist who has turned against him over his push to rewrite the constitution, named three national guard sergeants on Thursday, saying they were charged with homicide for that shooting and that a court had put them in custody.
