The Pentagon said late Thursday that two Venezuelan aircraft flew close to a U.S. Naval vessel in what it called a “highly provocative move.”
“Today, two Maduro regime military aircraft flew near a U.S. Navy vessel in international waters. This highly provocative move was designed to interfere with our counter narco-terror operations,” the Defense Department said in a post on the social platform X.
“The cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the US military,” the department added.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that his country was at “maximum preparedness” in light of the U.S. military recently boosting its Caribbean maritime force to fight against threats from Latin American drug cartels.
“In the face of this maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum preparedness for the defense of Venezuela,” Maduro said Monday, according to The Associated Press.
Maduro called the deployment of multiple U.S. ships, a submarine and Marines “an extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal and bloody threat.”
On Tuesday, President Trump said that the U.S. military strike that killed 11 “terrorists” on a “drug vessel” in the Caribbean in the wake of leaving Venezuela.
The Tuesday morning strike hit a boat with members of the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational gang that is also designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said in a previous Truth Social post.
