Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo has as­sured the pub­lic that the coun­try re­mains sta­ble af­ter shoot­ing erupt­ed near Mi­raflo­res Palace in Cara­cas on Mon­day night.

Au­thor­i­ties are at­tribut­ing the an­ti-air­craft fire to mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion among se­cu­ri­ty groups, as Venezuela’s armed forces re­main on high alert fol­low­ing US airstrikes over the week­end.

The Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and In­for­ma­tion said the drones in­volved were “fly­ing with­out per­mis­sion” and em­pha­sized that no con­fronta­tion oc­curred, adding that the na­tion re­mains calm.

Ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan dai­ly El Úl­ti­mas Noti­cias, Ca­bel­lo con­duct­ed a night pa­trol of Cara­cas, over­see­ing po­lice op­er­a­tions to en­sure con­tin­ued se­cu­ri­ty across the cap­i­tal. Ca­bel­lo, who al­so serves as Vice Pres­i­dent for Pol­i­cy, Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty, and Peace, vis­it­ed the Car­icuao parish, con­firm­ing that of­fi­cers re­main vig­i­lant and pre­pared for any even­tu­al­i­ty.

Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López stat­ed that the Bo­li­var­i­an Na­tion­al Armed Forces (FANB) are ful­ly back­ing Del­cy Ro­dríguez in her lead­er­ship role.

“From the FANB, we will sup­port Dr Del­cy, as act­ing pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, in the dif­fi­cult tasks that geopo­lit­i­cal tur­bu­lence and the na­tion de­mand. Count on us!” he de­clared on his Telegram ac­count.

The Venezue­lan mil­i­tary an­nounced that at least 24 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were killed dur­ing the US op­er­a­tion to cap­ture Maduro, bring­ing the of­fi­cial death toll to at least 56.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Tarek William Saab said Tues­day that “dozens” of of­fi­cials and civil­ians were killed and that pros­e­cu­tors would in­ves­ti­gate the deaths, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as a po­ten­tial “war crime.” He did not spec­i­fy whether the ca­su­al­ties ref­er­enced were all Venezue­lans.

The toll al­so in­cludes 32 Cuban mil­i­tary and po­lice per­son­nel work­ing in Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to Ha­vana, prompt­ing two days of of­fi­cial mourn­ing on the Caribbean is­land.