The aim of the failed mercenary incursion into Venezuela was the death of the country’s President Nicolas Maduro, he has claimed. Several mercenaries were killed and two captured, with one turning out to be a veteran DEA agent.
“The objective was to kill the president of Venezuela,” Maduro said on Monday, citing the uncovered “evidence, testimonies and videos” of the incident.
Earlier in the day, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry squarely pinned the blame for the failed incursion on the US and Colombia.
“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounces to the international community a new mercenary and terrorist aggression organized from the territory of the Republic of Colombia and planned by US agents, against peace, democracy and sovereignty of Venezuela,” the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Colombia has denied any responsibility, however, dismissing the Venezuelan accusations as “unfounded.”
On Sunday, Venezuelan military forces confronted a group of armed individuals who tried to infiltrate the country by boat in the state of La Guaira. The soldiers killed at least eight mercenaries and apprehended two of them, seizing a boat and a cache of weapons. One of the captured militants admitted to being a “veteran agent” of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Foreign Ministry said.
The group was apparently supported by a local anti-government cell, as the military captured several vehicles ashore, including pickup trucks with mounted machine guns. Photos from the scene show a large stash of ammunition, weapons and other equipment seized from the militants.
The US has been actively involved in attempts to oust the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for over a year. Early in 2019, opposition leader and rogue lawmaker Juan Guaido declared himself the country’s ‘interim president’, immediately obtaining recognition from Washington and its allies.
Back in March, the US government ramped up its anti-Maduro game again, placing an eye-watering bounty of $15 million on the Venezuelan president. The US indicted the president for “drug trafficking” and accused him of conspiring to “flood the United States with cocaine.” Caracas, however, stood defiant in the face of all the allegations, branding the indictment “a new form of coup d’etat.”
Despite the broad foreign support, all of Guaido’s attempts to topple Maduro – ranging from mass protests to a botched military coup – have so far been unsuccessful.
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