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A police helicopter has dropped grenades on Venezuela’s Supreme Court building and fired shots at the interior ministry in what President Nicolas Maduro called a “terror attack” against his government.

Information minister Ernesto Villegas said the stolen helicopter first fired 15 shots on the ministry in Caracas, the capital, as a reception was taking place on Tuesday.

It then flew a short distance to the Supreme Court building and dropped four grenades, two of them near the national guardsmen protecting the building.
Maduro said no one was injured as the grenades failed to detonate during the incident.

The attack occurred as Maduro was speaking live on state television to journalists gathered at the presidential palace.  “I have activated the entire armed forces to defend the peace,” he said.

However, opponents on social media accused the president himself of trying to spread fear to help justify a crackdown against Venezuelans seeking to block his plans to rewrite the constitution.

Maduro has been facing three months of opposition protests and some dissent from within government ranks.

An AP reporter heard gunfire as a helicopter buzzed over downtown Caracas but was unable to confirm where the shots were being fired from.

Around the time of the attack, a video appeared on social media in which a police squad pilot, identified as Oscar Perez, called for a rebellion against the Maduro’s “tyranny”.

“We have two choices; be judged tomorrow by our conscience and the people or begin today to free ourselves from this corrupt government,” he said.

Perez read his statement with four people dressed in military fatigues, ski masks and carrying assault rifles standing behind him.

Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that this was a “very strange incident”.

“It seems on the one hand to have been an isolated incident, with no response so far from any military units that we can tell,” said Gunson, speaking from Caracas.

“It could be that this is just a few crazy people trying to set off some kind of coup, or it could indeed be some kind of fake incident that the government is using in order to justify a further crackdown,” he said.

Teresa Bo, reporting from Caracas, said details were still emerging on what was a “confusing incident” on a “very tense night”.

“The government says they have identified the group [responsible] and they say they will detain them as soon as possible,” she said.

“This is happening at the same time that the Supreme Court announced that they will allow the government to call martial law in the country after the protests that have happened here for almost three months,” said Bo.

She said that the Supreme Court had also announced it was removing the immunity of lawmakers – “especially of opposition lawmakers, who the government accuses of promoting the protests that have already caused dozens of deaths,” said Bo.

Earlier on Tuesday, Maduro warned that he and supporters would take up arms if his socialist government was violently overthrown by opponents who have been on the streets protesting for three months.

“I’m telling the world, and I hope the world listens after 90 days of protest, destruction and death,” Maduro said in reference to anti-government unrest that has led to at least 75 deaths in the Opec nation since April.

“If Venezuela was plunged into chaos and violence and the Bolivarian Revolution destroyed, we would go to combat. We would never give up, and what couldn’t be done with votes, we would do with weapons, we would liberate the fatherland with weapons.” — Al Jazeera