New York, March 11 (RHC)--Senior US officials have said Nicolás Maduro's government burned an aid convoy last month, but video clips contradict that version and show how unverified information spread through Twitter and television, an article by The New York Times Sunday edition affirmed.

"The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger," the newspaper reported.

The New York Times then recalled that the State Department released a video claiming that Maduro had ordered the trucks burned. The images were reproduced on dozens of news sites and television screens throughout Latin America as evidence of "Maduro's cruelty."

And then The New York Times said: "But there is a problem: The opposition itself, not Mr. Maduro’s men, appears to have set the cargo alight accidentally.."

The newspaper explained that unpublished footage obtained by its reporters and previously published tapes -including footage released by the Colombian government, which had blamed Maduro for the fire- allowed for a reconstruction of the incident.

That reconstruction suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an anti-government protester appears to have set the fire.

"At one point, a homemade bomb made from a bottle is hurled toward the police blocking a bridge connecting Colombia and Venezuela (...) but the rag used to light the bomb separates from the bottle flying toward the aid truck instead. Half a minute later, the truck is in flames on fire,” said The New York Times.

"The same opponent can be seen 20 minutes later, in another video, hitting another aid truck with a Molotov cocktail, without turning it on".

The New York Times version confirms what Venezuelan authorities said from the very day of the event, that the opposition had started the fire.