The blasts in Venezuela come as the United States military has been targeting alleged drug-smuggling boats. On Friday, Venezuela said it was open to negotiating an agreement with the US to combat drug trafficking.
Maduro also said in a pre-taped interview aired on Thursday that the US wanted to force a government change in Venezuela and gain access to its vast oil reserves through the months-long pressure campaign that began with a massive military deployment to the Caribbean Sea in August.
Maduro has been charged with narco-terrorism in the US. The CIA was behind a drone strike last week at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels in what was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the US began strikes on boats in September.
US President Donald Trump for months had threatened that he could soon order strikes on targets on Venezuelan land. The US has also seized sanctioned oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, and Trump ordered a blockade of others in a move that seemed designed to put a tighter chokehold on the South American country’s economy.
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The US military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed was at least 115, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.
They followed a major build-up of American forces in the waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier, which added thousands more troops to what was already the largest military presence in the region in generations.
Trump has justified the boat strikes as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. and asserted that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
AP
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