Guyana presses Venezuela on border gunfire as they vie over an energy-rich region

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Guyana on Thursday demanded that Venezuela investigate what it said were two recent shootings targeting Guyanese troops along their shared border, including one that wounded a soldier.

A protest note from Guyana’s Foreign Ministry said the two attacks took place earlier this month on soldiers patrolling the Cuyuni River. It comes just days after the neighboring countries appeared before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for arguments in a dispute over a mineral- and oil-rich region that encompasses two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and that Venezuela claims as its own.

One of the attacks left a soldier with two gunshot wounds in the leg, Guyana’s Defense Force said in a statement. Guyanese officials have reported similar shootings over the past two years, with one of them injuring eight soldiers, according to the statement.

The military said soldiers returned fire in all cases.

The protest note also urged Venezuela’s government to take steps to prevent future attacks against Guyanese civilians and military.

The Venezuelan government’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, Venezuelan’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez defended her country’s claim to the Essequibo region at the United Nations’ highest court, telling judges in The Hague that political negotiations — not a judicial ruling — will resolve the century-old territorial dispute between the South American countries.

The 62,000-square-mile territory is rich in gold, diamonds, timber and other natural resources. It also sits near massive offshore oil deposits currently producing an average 900,000 barrels a day.

Venezuela has considered Essequibo its own since the Spanish colonial period, when the jungle region fell within its boundaries. But an 1899 decision by arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States drew the border along the Essequibo River largely in favor of Guyana.

Venezuela has argued that a 1966 agreement sealed in Geneva to resolve the dispute effectively nullified the 19th-century arbitration. In 2018, however, three years after ExxonMobil announced a significant oil discovery off the Essequibo coast, Guyana’s government went to the International Court of Justice and asked judges to uphold the 1899 ruling.

Tensions between the countries further flared in 2023, when Rodríguez’s predecessor threatened to annex the region by force after holding a referendum asking voters if Essequibo should be turned into a Venezuelan state.

When hearings opened last week, Guyana’s foreign minister, Hugh Hilton Todd, told the panel of international judges that the dispute “has been a blight on our existence as a sovereign state from the very beginning.” He said that 70% of Guyana’s territory is at stake.

The court is likely to take months to issue a final and legally binding ruling in the case.