Laht.com: Venezuelan authorities said that they found the assault rifles that belonged to the two guardsmen recently killed near the border with Colombia.

"We recovered the two rifles and the radio of the two murdered guardsmen and at the site we also found the body of a person who has not been identified," Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami told the press in Caracas. He said that the find occurred on Wednesday on the outskirts of San Antonio del Tachira, just a few meters from the Colombian border. "The investigative police are working to identify the corpse and (determine) the cause of death. We also found a 9 mm pistol with the serial numbers defaced," El Aissami said.

Venezuelan prosecutors have charged Johan Mora, 20, in connection with Monday's killings of two National Guard members. They say he was one of the four individuals on motorcycles who gunned down the guardsmen at a mobile checkpoint in El Palotal, a few meters from the border between Venezuela and Colombia. Authorities said they have identified Mora's accomplices and are searching for them.

The slayings of the guardsmen prompted Venezuela to impose tighter restrictions on border traffic, and residents of the Colombian city of Cucuta complained Thursday that members of Venezuela's National Guard fatally shot a Colombian illegal gasoline vendor who crossed into the neighboring country by river. In remarks to RCN Radio, a female companion of the smuggler said the guardsmen shot him Wednesday "at point-blank range." The gasoline smuggler was identified as Henry Mora, 39.

The border between Colombia and Venezuela has become the scene of a diplomatic and trade crisis that the two countries have been going through since August, when leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez decided to freeze relations upon learning that Bogota and Washington were preparing a military accord, which was signed last Friday.

The pact gives the US Armed Forces access to seven bases in Colombia.

The situation became more complicated with the massacre last month on Venezuelan territory of 12 people, among them nine Colombians, and this week's killing of the Venezuelan National Guard members.

Despite the fact that the flow of passengers and merchandise across the frontier has resumed, the Colombian vendors expressed to RCN Radio their discontent over the restrictions being imposed on them by the Venezuelan National Guard, which is now demanding that they show identification to be able to enter the neighboring country.

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