 "This handout photo released by the US Defence Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) shows the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely in the Red Sea on June 7, 2024. It is one of the warships deployed towards Venezuela for counternarcotics operations. (Photo: DVIDS/AFP)")
Venezuela’s interior ministry has said that none of the 11 people killed in a US military strike on a boat belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, as media reports suggested that the attack came after the vessel had turned around and was heading back to shore.
“They openly confessed to killing 11 people. We have done our investigations here in our country, and there are the families of the disappeared people who want their relatives, and when we asked in the towns, none were from Tren de Aragua, none were drug traffickers," Venezuela’s interior minister Diosdado Cabello has said.
The US carried out strikes on the boat, claiming that it was carrying drug traffickers and illegal narcotics, but fell short of providing any further detail despite being pushed by the US Congress for a justification for the action.
‘Did they have QR code?’
Cabello came down heavily on the Trump administration, saying, “A murder has been committed against a group of citizens using lethal force."
He asked, “How did they identify them as members of the Tren de Aragua? Did they have, I don’t know, a chip? Did they have a QR code and [the US military] read it from above in the dark?”
The Venezuelan government has even claimed that the video of the attack posted by Trump was AI-generated.
US national security officials acknowledged during a closed briefing this week on Capitol Hill that the boat was fired on multiple times by the US military after it had changed course, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
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Last week, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he had deployed 25,000 troops along the Caribbean coast and the border with Colombia amid soaring tensions with Trump.
In a message on social media, Maduro said he had deployed “25,000 men and women from our glorious National Bolivarian Armed Forces” to the frontier with Colombia and the northeast coast, where the country’s biggest oil refineries are situated.
The deployment aimed to ensure “the defense of national sovereignty, the security of the country and the fight for peace,” he added.
With inputs from agencies