New Venezuela assembly fires dissident attorney general

The body, which made the decisions its first order of business since its widely-condemned election a week ago, also said it planned to operate as Venezuela's supreme power for up to two years.

Just before the assembly's first working session in the ornate Legislative Palace in Caracas, dozens of troops posted outside the prosecutors' offices prevented Ortega from entering.

"You didn't see how they manhandled me, how they attacked me with shields," Ortega told reporters outside after being rebuffed.

Ortega has been a thorn in President Nicolas Maduro's side for months, after she broke ranks with him over the legality of the Constituent Assembly.

Her sacking was widely expected, but its swiftness -- and the move to put her on trial for alleged "irregularities" while in office -- showed the assembly was keen on taking aggressive action right out of the gate.

Citing the "rupture of the democratic order," Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil unanimously decided to suspend Venezuela from Mercosur, a South American trading bloc, Foreign ministers from the four founding members of the bloc issued a statement in Sao Paulo calling for "the immediate start of a process of political transition and restoration of the democratic order."

Before Ortega's sacking, the head of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, tweeted: "An aggression against her (Ortega) is an aggression against Venezuelan democracy."

Today, the OAS' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had ordered Venezuela to protect Ortega, saying her life was at risk after she launched an investigation into the legality of the Constituent Assembly.

US National Security Advisor HR McMaster in an interview that aired today on US cable news channel MSNB accused Maduro of leading an "authoritarian dictatorship" that had staged a "coup" against democracy.

But he ruled out foreign military intervention in the oil-rich nation, and said Washington did not want to give Maduro a pretext for blaming Washington for his mounting woes.

"It's important for us to place responsibility for this catastrophe on Maduro's shoulders. He is the one who has caused it, and he's the one who's perpetuating it," McMaster said.

The United States, the European Union and major Latin American nations including Mexico, Argentina and Chile have all rejected the assembly.

The body's legitimacy was struck a hard blow when a British-based firm that supplied the voting technology, Smartmatic, said this week the turnout figure was "tampered with" and greatly exaggerated.

Subsequent US sanctions directly targeted Maduro. More were threatened against the assembly's 545 members.

Maduro has responded by lashing out at US "imperialism" and calling the heads of other Latin American states vassals to Washington.