Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered military exercises in the country's largest neighborhoods on Monday in response to the deployment of US warships off the coast of Venezuela.
"We will activate all the military forces of total defense, popular defense and police defense," Maduro said in an audio message on the social networking site Telegram.
The mobilization aims to "win peace" by defending the country's "mountains, coasts, schools, hospitals, factories, markets," the Venezuelan head of state said. The
country's state television network broadcast footage of armored vehicles deployed since dawn in the Petare neighborhood of Caracas, one of the most populous in the country.
The exercises involve, in addition to Caracas, the neighboring state of Miranda, with a total population estimated at 7 million inhabitants.
Washington accuses Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his government of leading a huge drug trafficking organization to the United States and in early September deployed eight warships and a nuclear-powered submarine off the coast of Venezuela, officially as part of an operation against the drug trade.
Caracas categorically denies this and in response to the American mobilization, which it considers a "military threat", it has launched military exercises and mobilized reservists. For President Maduro, Washington is using the drug trade as a pretext “to impose a regime change” and seize the country’s significant oil reserves.
At least five vessels presented as drug-carrying vessels have been destroyed by the US Navy since September 2, with the death toll reaching at least 27.
The US naval expansion “has as its sole objective the theft of Venezuela’s vast natural resources,” complained the country’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.
.jpg)
.jpeg)
0 Comments