The Venezuelan government on Thursday denounced the \u201cillegal incursion\u201d of five American fighter jets into the country’s coastal airspace, alleging \u201ca pattern of harassment\u201d by the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
The news came a day before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the U.S. military killed four \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d<\/a> off the coast of Venezuela in the latest in a series of U.S. strikes on boats<\/a> in the Caribbean Sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n Venezuela\u2019s defense and foreign affairs ministries released a joint statement<\/a> a day prior, stating that \u201ccombat aircraft\u201d from the U.S. had been detected \u201capproximately 75 kilometers from our coasts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier in the day, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino described the aircraft as U.S. F-35 fighter jets that had been detected by air defense systems in the Maiquet\u00eda flight information region, according to AVN<\/a>, Venezuela’s national news agency.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are combat aircraft,\u201d Padrino said on TV<\/a>. \u201cCombat aircraft that U.S. imperialism has dared to approach the Venezuelan coast.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe had never seen this deployment of aircraft, which we know are stationed in Puerto Rico, of the F-35 class,\u201d Padrino added.<\/p>\n The maneuver, the ministries wrote, \u201cconstitutes a provocation that threatens national sovereignty and contravenes the norms of international law and the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis serious report is added to other similar illegal incursions previously recorded and already denounced by the Bolivarian government, which forms a pattern of harassment that cannot be tolerated,\u201d the ministries added. <\/p>\n Hegseth announced Friday that the U.S. had carried out a strike \u201cin international waters\u201d off the coast of Venezuela that morning targeting a boat he said was carrying narcotics.<\/p>\n \u201cOur intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route,\u201d Hegseth wrote on the social platform X<\/a>, noting that President Trump ordered the strike.\u00a0\u201cThese strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n The Friday strike marks at least the fourth time the U.S. military has targeted boats<\/a> the administration said were on their way to the U.S. and carrying drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Experts raised concerns<\/a> that the strikes may violate international law. On Thursday, Trump retroactively provided legal rationale<\/a> for the strikes by declaring that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels deemed to be terrorist groups by the administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Venezuelan government on Thursday denounced the \u201cillegal incursion\u201d of five American fighter jets into the country’s coastal ...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}