Venezuelan Military Raids Office of Opposition, Twitter Protest Images Reported Blocked [Video]

The national headquarters of the Popular Will political party in Venezuela was raided by government security forces on Monday as the administration of Nicolas Maduro has been trying to apprehend the leader of the party, Leopoldo Lopez.

"The intelligence officers arrived and began to harass us," said Adriangela Ruiz, a party activist, to Reuters. "They threw tear gas, took computers and tried to take away several people."

Witnesses say that protesters prevented the security forces from taking away any of the individuals removed from the party's headquarters. Indeed, in one video provided to the international media an individual is seen running away from the scene in handcuffs and being placed on a motorcycle that quickly sped away. The video provided cannot be verified.

"They were looking for Leopoldo and all the leaders of our political party," said David Smolansky, a mayor of one of Caracas' municipalities to USA Today.

Lopez has said that he will present himself and be available for arrest as part of a march on the Interior Ministry on Tuesday.

Sporadic clashes and protests have continued in the country despite the government issuing restrictions against any such activity without prior authorization from the authorities. The crisis follows the death of three student activists last Wednesday. There are unconfirmed reports that there may have been more deaths that the government has been concealing from the public.

Reports coming out of Venezuela say that the government is suppressing the media from reporting on the protests within the country, and has even shut off a popular television news station based next door in Colombia.

A spokesperson from Twitter, Nu Wexler, confirmed to Bloomberg that images from Venezuela have been blocked from being shared across the popular social media platform. The Twitter servers used by Venezuelans are located outside the country and the company said that images missing from Venezuelan-based users was also reported in other countries. Venezuela's CANTV communications company denied responsibility for the censoring.

"CANTV La Compania Anonima Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV) emphatically and categorically denies that it is involved in the failure reported by users yesterday February 13 affecting the loading of images in the Twitter app," read a statement on the company's website.

Ironically, this comes after Maduro asked authorities to investigate the disappearance of 6,000 "followers" from his own Twitter account back in November.

The Venezuelan government has also kicked three U.S. diplomats out of the country, accusing them of meeting with students on school property to encourage the protests.

(Video posted by Venezuelan living in the United States, not an independent newscast.)