CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela on Friday accused the United States of conducting an “undeclared war” in the Caribbean and urged a UN investigation of US attacks on ships that have killed more than a dozen individuals US claimed were drug traffickers.
Washington has stationed warships in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, accompanied by F-35 fighter jets dispatched to Puerto Rico in what it describes as an anti-drug mission.
It is an unannounced war, and you can already observe how people, whether they are drug traffickers or not, have been killed in the Caribbean Sea. Killed without the right to defend themselves,” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez stated while attending a military exercise over the US threat.
His comments were only hours before US President Donald Trump declared another military attack on a boat, saying three more so-called “narcoterrorists” were killed, taking the death toll in the past few weeks to 17.
He would not say when the assault occurred, and only that it was in the US Southern Command area of operations, which includes Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean.
The attacks have raised arguments regarding the legality of the assassinations, with drug trafficking not being an offense warranting the death penalty under US law.
Washington has also not released detailed information to support its arguments that the attacked boats have indeed been smuggling drugs.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab stated that “the use of missiles and nuclear weapons to kill defenseless fishermen on a tiny boat are crimes against humanity that have to be investigated by the UN.”
The largest US naval deployment in the Caribbean in several decades has fueled fears the United States is moving to attack Venezuelan soil.
Venezuela on Wednesday opened three days of military drills on its Caribbean island of La Orchila, following the perceived threat from a US fleet of seven ships and an atomic-powered submarine.
Venezuela blames US for fighting ‘undeclared war,’ calls for UN investigation
La Orchila is near where the United States intercepted and detained a Venezuelan fishing boat for eight hours over the weekend.
‘Imperial plan’
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is not recognized as legitimate by the United States and is accused of operating a drug cartel, called on citizens to sign up for militia training to “defend the homeland.”
Late Thursday, he said that troops will give weapons training to residents of poor neighborhoods.
Maduro, to whom Washington has placed a $50 million bounty on charges of drug trafficking, suspects the Trump administration of plotting an invasion in pursuit.
Trump had stated on Tuesday that American forces “knocked off” three boats traveling across the Caribbean, but Washington gave only reports and video records of two of the attacks.
Maduro accused the United States of conspiring “an imperial design for regime change and to install a US puppet regime… to come and steal our oil.”
He has already promised repeatedly that Caracas will exercise its “legitimate right to defend itself” against US aggression.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who is a two-time presidential candidate and a fierce Maduro critic, told Friday he would not endorse any US invasion.
“I still think that the answer is not military, but political,” he said, adding that Trump’s moves were counterproductive and “entrenching those in power.”
He urged the freedom of nearly a thousand dissidents imprisoned under Maduro, and for the Venezuelan government to be collegial in foreign affairs.
