Venezuela: 5 US fighters flying near its coast a national security threat
The Venezuelan government on Thursday denounced the “illegal incursion” of five American fighter jets into the country’s coastal airspace, alleging “a pattern of harassment” by the U.S. government.
The news came a day before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the U.S. military killed four “narco-terrorists” off the coast of Venezuela in the latest in a series of U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
Venezuela’s defense and foreign affairs ministries released a joint statement a day prior, stating that “combat aircraft” from the U.S. had been detected “approximately 75 kilometers from our coasts.”
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 Maiquetía flight information region, according to AVN, Venezuela’s national news agency.
“They are combat aircraft,” Padrino said on TV. “Combat aircraft that U.S. imperialism has dared to approach the Venezuelan coast.”
“We had never seen this deployment of aircraft, which we know are stationed in Puerto Rico, of the F-35 class,” Padrino added.
The maneuver, the ministries wrote, “constitutes a provocation that threatens national sovereignty and contravenes the norms of international law and the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.”
“This 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,” the ministries added.
Hegseth announced Friday that the U.S. had carried out a strike “in international waters” off the coast of Venezuela that morning targeting a boat he said was carrying narcotics.
“Our 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,” Hegseth wrote on the social platform X, noting that President Trump ordered the strike. “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”
The Friday strike marks at least the fourth time the U.S. military has targeted boats the administration said were on their way to the U.S. and carrying drugs.
Experts raised concerns that the strikes may violate international law. On Thursday, Trump retroactively provided legal rationale 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.