May 28, 2013, 7:34 p.m. ET
U.S. Officials Shot in Caracas Incident

By KEJAL VYAS and EZEQUIEL MINAYA
CARACAS—Two U.S. officials at the U.S. Embassy, one a military attache, were wounded by gunfire early Tuesday morning while at a strip club here, Venezuelan officials said.
Two men approached the embassy workers at about 4:15 a.m. inside a club, shot them after a verbal confrontation and fled in a gray Toyota Autana truck, a police department spokeswoman said. She said the two men have been identified by police but not yet apprehended.
The U.S. Embassy in Caracas confirmed two of its employees were injured but that their injuries didn't appear to be life-threatening. It said they were recovering at a hospital, but didn't offer further details. The men were unavailable to comment.
The police spokeswoman, from Caracas's Chacao district, an upscale zone where the shootings took place, identified one of the attachés as Roberto Ezequiel Rosas, 33 years old, who said he was shot in the right leg. Another person familiar with the matter said the other shooting victim was Paul Marwin, in his 40s, but didn't have details on the nature of his injuries.
Police found Mr. Rosas injured inside Antonella Club 2012, according to the spokeswoman, who said Mr. Marwin wasn't found inside the club.
Some U.S. officials expressed concern that the latest incident could reflect unfavorably on the U.S. in Venezuela, where the government has routinely been hostile to Washington during and since the presidency of the late Hugo Chávez. Mr. Chávez's handpicked heir Nicolás Maduro narrowly won the presidency in April.
One U.S. official said that the men involved in the incident appear to have displayed questionable judgment. "When you are in a place like Caracas, you have to be purer than Caesar's wife," the official said.
Venezuela's government routinely accuses the U.S. of conspiracy, from having caused the late Mr. Chávez's fatal cancer to regularly trying to overthrow the government. In March, Mr. Maduro expelled two U.S. officials for allegedly conspiring against the Venezuelan government, a charge the U.S. strongly denied.
But the official said there were no signs that Mr. Maduro's government, which recently sent a new chargé d'affaires to Washington who is seen as a moderate, would try to get political mileage out of the incident.
Venezuela has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. Armed robberies as well as ransom kidnappings are common and the streets of the otherwise densely populated capital Caracas are often empty of pedestrians after nightfall as many remain indoors to avoid being targeted. This month, Mr. Maduro ordered the military to set up patrols around the crime-ridden slums that cover the Caracas hillsides. Mr. Maduro, a former vice president and foreign minister, was elected to replace Mr. Chávez who died in March from cancer complications.
The Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a nonprofit that tracks crime, estimates more than 21,000 homicides took place in the country last year. That would give Venezuela a murder rate of about 72 per 100,000 residents, compared with about 5 per 100,000 in the U.S.
The U.S. State Department divides Caracas into three color-coded security zones: yellow, orange and red. Chacao falls into the orange zone, where travel between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. "is not recommended," the department website says.
Envoys from countries including Costa Rica and Mexico were targets of kidnappings last year and a Chilean consul in November 2011 was shot before being released by his abductors. He eventually recovered from the attack.
The site includes a long list of red zones where unofficial travel is prohibited. There are no city sectors listed as being in the yellow zone, which don't carry travel restrictions.
—José de Córdoba and Dan Molinski contributed to this article.Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@dowjones.com and Ezequiel Minaya at ezequiel.minaya@wsj.com
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