'We long for change' Uproar on the streets after disputed election result

It was mid-morning in Catia - 12 hours after Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in Venezuela's presidential election - and the residents of this longtime Chavista stronghold were up in arms.

- Tom Phillips & Patricia Torres

At first, the sound of spoons clattering against crockery began timidly, puncturing the eerie silence that had gripped large chunks of the capital, Caracas, in the hours after Maduro's highly controversial move to claim another six-year term.

Soon it grew into a thundering, indignant cacophony as locals appeared at their grated windows with pots, pans and plates, to let the Venezuelan strongman know what they thought of his 11-year rule, during which the oil-rich country has nosedived into one of the worst ever economic collapses outside a war zone.

"People are fed up with the same old shit - with the fraud," fumed one local, Yesica Otaiza, as the cacerolazo - a pot-banging protest and South American tradition intended to express political discontent-spread to a neighbouring tower block and along the street.

"We are longing for change and he [Maduro] laughed at us and rubbed it in our faces," said the street hawker, 38, who, like many, was convinced the election had been stolen.

"He doesn't want to accept that he lost." Sofía Sánchez, 12, pointed her mother's mobile phone skywards towards the balconies to capture the startling uproar - once unthinkable in a pro-government bastion such as this. "They're doing this because they don't agree with what the president Nicolás Maduro Moros is doing," she said, explaining that two of her aunts had fled overseas to Chile to escape the economic meltdown.

"They don't want Maduro as president because he hasn't been a good president." Similar sentiments could be heard across Venezuela's on-edge capital yesterday after Maduro's disputed claim to have won re-election sparked international condemnation and outrage from opposition voters who believe they were the true winners.

The British Foreign Office said it was concerned by "allegations of serious irregularities" in the vote and Chile's leftist president, Gabriel Boric, called it "hard to believe".