State of emergency declared in Venezuela after US military strikes; Maduro captured, flown out of country, says Trump
VENEZUELA, JAN 3 : US President Donald Trump said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been captured and flown from the country after launching a “large scale strike” on the South American country.
Earlier, Venezuela accused the United States of an “extremely serious military aggression” after explosions rocked the capital Caracas in the early hours of Saturday following a months-long pressure campaign by President Donald Trump.
The White House and Pentagon have not commented on the explosions and reports of aircraft over the city. US media outlets CBS News and Fox News reported that unnamed Trump administration officials confirming that US forces were involved.
At least seven explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard around 2 am. local time Saturday in the capital, Caracas. Venezuela’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations in multiple states.
“Venezuela rejects, repudiates, and denounces before the international community the extremely serious military aggression perpetrated by the current government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory and people,” the government of leftist President Nicolas Maduro said.
The Venezuelan leader also declared a state of emergency.
The president of neighboring Colombia called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations over the strikes.
“Alerting the whole world that they have attacked Venezuela,” leftist leader Gustavo Petro wrote on social media platform X.
Confusion reigned in Caracas as the strikes began. People rushed to their windows and terraces in the middle of the night to try to make sense of events.
“From here, we can hear explosions near Fort Tiuna,” said Emmanuel Parabavis, referring to a large military base in the capital.
“Right now, you can hear something that sounds like a machine gun. There are a lot of detonations and gunfire,” Parabavis, 29, a public relations employee in the El Valle district, told AFP.
Power has been cut in certain parts of the city, according to residents.
Smoke could be seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas. Another military installation in the capital was without power.
People in various neighborhoods rushed to the streets. Some could be seen in the distance from various areas of Caracas.
“The whole ground shook. This is horrible. We heard explosions and planes,” said Carmen Hidalgo, a 21-year-old office worker, her voice trembling. She was walking briskly with two relatives, returning from a birthday party. “We felt like the air was hitting us.”
Pentagon referred requests for comment to the White House, which didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment. Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Authority has banned US commercial flights in Venezuelan airspace over “ongoing military activity” ahead of explosions in Caracas.
The FAA’s warning, known as “Notice to Airmen,” came shortly after one in the morning on the east coast of the U.S. It warned all commercial and private U.S. pilots that the airspace over Venezuela and the small island nation of Curacao, just off the coast of the country to the north, was off-limits “due to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity.”
The warnings are designed to alert pilots to a variety of dangers.
Venezuelan President calls people to action
Venezuela’s government, in the statement, called on its supporters to take to the streets.
“People to the streets!” the statement said. “The Bolivarian Government calls on all social and political forces in the country to activate mobilization plans and repudiate this imperialist attack.”
The statement added that President Nicolás Maduro had “ordered all national defence plans to be implemented” and declared “a state of external disturbance”. That state of emergency gives him the power to suspend people’s rights and expand the role of the armed forces.
The U.S. military, in recent days, has been targeting alleged drug-smuggling boats. On Friday, Venezuela said it was open to negotiating an agreement with the U.S. to combat drug trafficking.
Maduro also said in a pretaped interview aired Thursday that the U.S. wants to force a government change in Venezuela and gain access to its vast oil reserves through the monthslong pressure campaign that began with a massive military deployment to the Caribbean Sea in August.
Maduro has been charged with narco-terrorism in the U.S. The CIA was behind a drone strike last week at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels in what was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes on boats in September.
U.S. President Donald Trump for months had threatened that he could soon order strikes on targets on Venezuelan land. The U.S. has also seized sanctioned oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, and Trump ordered a blockade of others in a move that seemed designed to put a tighter chokehold on the South American country’s economy.
The U.S. military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes is 35 and the number of people killed is at least 115, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.
They followed a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier, which added thousands more troops to what was already the largest military presence in the region in generations.
Trump has justified the boat strikes as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. and asserted that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported on the explosions in Caracas on Saturday, showing images of the Venezuelan capital. Iran has been close to Venezuela for years, in part due to their shared enmity of the U.S.
-AFP
