None of the 11 people killed in a US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean last week were members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, Venezuela’s interior minister has said, as the South American country deployed troops amid heightened tensions with the US.
The administration of Donald Trump has said the boat was transporting illegal narcotics, but has provided scant further information about the incident, even amid demands from members of the US Congress for a justification for the action.
“They openly confessed to killing 11 people,” the interior minister and ruling party head, Diosdado Cabello, said on state television. “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.
“A murder has been committed against a group of citizens using lethal force,” added Cabello, questioning how the US could determine whether drugs were on the boat and why the people were not instead arrested.
The Venezuelan government said after the incident that a video post by Trump of the strike was artificial intelligence.
“These were evil Tren de Aragua narco-terrorists trying to bring illegal drugs into our country and kill Americans,” a White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, said in response to questions.
Kelly also said Nicolás Maduro was not the legitimate president of Venezuela and that he was a “fugitive”.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Maduro said early on Thursday his country would deploy military, police and civilian defenses at 284 “battlefront” locations across the country, his latest show of military capacity.
The Trump administration has ratcheted up the US military presence in the southern Caribbean as part of what it says is a crackdown on drug smugglers, and ordered the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to a Puerto Rico airfield.
Maduro, who has alleged the US military is hoping to drive him from power, did not say how many military, police or civilian militias would participate in the new deployment.
His government has already announced an increase of 25,000 troops for states along Venezuela’s border with Colombia that are drug-trafficking hubs.
“We’re ready for an armed fight, if it’s necessary,” Maduro said from Ciudad Caribia, on the country’s central coast, in a broadcast on state television flanked by his defense minister.
“Along all the Venezuelan coasts, from the border with Colombia to the east of the country, from north to south and east to west, we have a full preparation of official troops,” he said.
Reuters witnesses in several cities around Venezuela did not note an increase in troop presence.
The US last month doubled its reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro to $50m over allegations of drug trafficking and links to criminal groups.
Maduro has always denied the accusations and his government says Venezuela is not a drug producer.
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