Some suspected the attacks on Venezuela were coming, but the shock was still real and no one knows what will happen next

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As they were jolted from their beds just before 2am on Saturday, many Caracas residents sought an innocent explanation for the racket that had interrupted their sleep: an exploding air conditioning unit, a tropical thunderstorm, an earthquake. Or perhaps a festive display of pyrotechnics over Venezuela’s mountain-flanked capital.

“I thought it might be fireworks,” Carlos Hurtado, a resident of the 23 de Enero housing estate on the city’s west side, recalled of the moment he was woken by a mysterious sequence of rumblings and explosions.