Venezuela's government on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that members of the country's opposition left the Argentine diplomatic compound where they had sheltered for over a year, but it denied that their arrival to the United States occurred under an international rescue operation as characterized by the political faction and the U.

Venezuela's opposition on Wednesday said that the government of President Nicolas Maduro had been surprised by the "international rescue" operation to remove five Venezuelan members of the opposition who had been living in Argentina's diplomatic residence in Caracas.

Five members of Venezuela’s political opposition left the Argentine diplomatic compound in their country’s capital, Caracas, where they had sheltered for more than a year to avoid arrest and were in the United States on Tuesday,