Nicolás Maduro denounces a US plan and Colombia to attack Venezuela
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, denounced this Tuesday that there is an alleged violent plan, which is woven from "the power" in Colombia and under orders from the United States, to attack Venezuela in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which totals 91 infected in the country.
"A terrorist nucleus that is training in Riohacha (Colombia) that is compiling weapons and says that it is going to attack Venezuela at any time," the president said during a statement from the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.
ABORTED PLAN
He reported that a subject, named Jorge Molinares, confessed to these plans when he was arrested on Monday, when he "was moving from Barranquilla to Riohacha" with an "arsenal of weapons" and "tactical war teams" that were seized by the Directorate of Venezuelan Military Counterintelligence.
"All those rifles," continued Maduro, were to be handed over to another subject, "alias Pantera," whose details will be known on Wednesday, when a communication minister, Jorge Rodríguez, is expected to appear to explain this matter.
"I have been forced to alert our people to conspiracies that unfortunately continue ... we have a lot of information, tomorrow we are going to reveal it completely," he said.
The president was "committed" to "defending the peace and stability of Venezuela in any circumstance", and considered "miserable" that these supposed plans exist when the country is going through a quarantine that seeks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
"There is much hatred of those who give orders in the north and those who support from power in Colombia (...) you have to be very miserable, have a lot of hatred to consider terrorist attacks (...) disturb peace and effort a national general union that our entire country is doing, "he said.
He insisted that there are "terrorist and coup centers from Colombia and the United States" and that some of them "have given the order to fill Venezuela with violence as it may."
A SHORT TRUCE
The health ministers of Colombia and Venezuela agreed last week on a joint strategy, with the help of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), to contain the pandemic in the more than 2,000 kilometers of border shared by both countries.
This approach, although virtual, was the first in more than a year due to the refusal of Colombia, which is part of the more than fifty countries that do not recognize Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela.
SEVEN NEW CASES
When addressing the behavior of the pandemic in the country, Maduro reported seven new cases, with which the total number of infected rose to 91, with Caracas and its neighboring state of Miranda still being the main sources of infection with 14 and 39 cases respectively.
He announced that in the case of Miranda, special isolation measures are being contemplated in some localities and detailed that at least three of the total were infected in the Los Roques Archipelago, in the middle of a party of which details are unknown.
Maduro said that in addition to importing Venezuela, it has its first local cases of COVID-19 infection, which it called "community-based."
The Government expects to complete some 1,200 COVID-19 tests this Wednesday to people who were suspected of having the disease according to the answers they gave in a survey of "general symptoms" that the Executive ordered online.
