Madrid, 29 years old (European Press)
US President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the airspace over and around Venezuela has been completely closed.
The US President announced on his platform, “Truth Social,” “To all airlines, pilots, drug traffickers, and human traffickers: We ask you to take into account that the airspace over Venezuela and its surrounding areas will remain completely closed.”
Trump’s announcement comes at the end of a week in which the North American president clearly warned that his military strategy in the war against drugs will shift in the near future from being limited to the waters of the Caribbean Sea to fighting on land.
On the same Thursday, Trump already warned that operations by North American forces would begin “very soon” in the “ground detention” of “several” alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers, raising speculation about possible US military intervention in the Latin American country.
“You’ve probably realized that people don’t want to deliver shipments by sea, and we’re going to start stopping them by land as well,” the White House tenant said in a remote conversation with military personnel on Thanksgiving. “By land, it’s easier, but that will start very soon.”
The Donald Trump administration, which allowed the CIA to operate in Venezuela, has used the Cartel of the Suns’ alleged role in drug trafficking as one of its main assets to justify attacks against alleged drug boats in Caribbean waters, although it has also extended to the eastern Pacific, adding at least 83 deaths in 21 operations in total.
These attacks, which come within the framework of the so-called “Operation Lance South,” are in addition to the increased US military presence in the region, which included the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, the largest in the US Navy.