Explosions, low-flying aircraft heard in Venezuela’s Caracas

Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of the military base in Caracas. Another military facility in the capital was also left without electricity.

This comes as the US military has been targeting boats allegedly involved in drug smuggling in recent days.

Venezuela on Friday said it was open to negotiating a deal with the United States to combat drug trafficking.

Maduro has also said the United States wants to force a change of government in Venezuela and gain access to its vast oil reserves through a months-long pressure campaign that began with a massive military deployment to the Caribbean Sea in August.

Maduro is accused of narco-terrorism in the United States. The CIA was behind last week’s drone strike on a docking area believed to be used by Venezuelan drug cartels, the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the US began attacking boats in September.

US President Donald Trump has been threatening to attack targets on Venezuelan territory for months.

The US military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since early September.

According to figures released by the Trump administration, as of Friday, the number of known boat attacks was 35 and the number of deaths was at least 115.

They have watched a massive build-up of American forces in the waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier, adding thousands more troops to the largest military presence in the region in generations.

Pedestrians can be seen running after explosions and the sound of low-flying planes in Caracas.Credit: access point

Trump justified the boat attacks as a necessary escalation to stop the flow of drugs into the United States and claimed the United States was engaged in a “gunfight” with drug cartels.

The US president has accused Venezuela of using oil revenues to finance a range of criminal activities, including drug trafficking and terrorism.

As part of Trump’s pressure campaign, the United States also seized two oil tankers and imposed sanctions on Maduro’s relatives as well as Chinese companies doing business with Venezuela.

The country denied the allegations and called the US actions illegal.

At least seven oil tankers bound for Venezuela turned back on Friday, according to ship movements tracked by Bloomberg on Friday, as tensions between the United States and the South American country escalate. This adds to four incidents that halted travel to Venezuela soon after U.S. forces boarded the Skipper in mid-December.

Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported the explosions in Caracas on Saturday by broadcasting images of the Venezuelan capital. Iran has been close to Venezuela for years, in part due to their shared hostility towards the United States.