VENEZUELA’S opposition denied fomenting a violent coup on Thursday — even as a woman was injured by petrol-bomb-throwing militants and a university campus was smashed.

Tachira Governor Jose Gregorio Vielma said rioters threw petrol bombs at a minibus in the state capital San Cristobal, injuring three people.

A video showed 61-year-old Lorenza Higuera in hospital with second-degree burns to her hands, arms and face.

On Wednesday a mob of masked youths demolished the front wall of a student study centre at the Catholic University of Tachira with sledgehammers.

Mr Vielma said two were identified as Deivy Jaimes Pinto and Carlos Prado Contreras, the same militants who graffitised city churches before Easter, urging the murder of priests.

At least 39 people have been killed since the start of April in riots in support of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) coalition’s demands for early presidential elections.

Mud parliamentary speaker Julio Borges has travelled to Peru’s capital Lima at the start of a tour to drum up support from regional leaders.

On Thursday he met Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, thanking the right-winger for his support for the opposition in Venezuela, saying he was the first “to recognise that there is no democracy there.”

Other leaders Mr Borges will meet include Mauricio Macri of Argentina, Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, an ally of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

Mr Borges insisted his mission was “not to create a coup d’etat, not a civil war and not violence, but peace and respect for the constitution.”

Earlier this week Vice-President Tareck El Aissami linked Mr Borges and his Justice First (PJ) party with an armed conspiracy broken up by police last week.

Paraguay’s parliament passed a motion on Thursday in support of the Venezuelan government’s response and respect for its sovereignty and international law.

The motion rejected attempts by Organisation of American States secretary-general Luis Almagro to suspend Venezuela from the bloc by invoking its democratic charter.

It came after last week’s Via Campesina continental summit of peasant groups in Colombia condemned the imperialist “international conspiracy” to violently overthrow the Venezuelan government.