\n<\/p>\n
United States President Donald Trump has said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela is to be closed \u201cin its entirety\u201d, as tensions between the countries escalate.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate response by Venezuela to Trump\u2019s\u00a0social media post on Saturday.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cTo all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,\u201d he wrote on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s post comes amid weeks of escalating rhetoric by senior US officials against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his government.<\/p>\n While the Trump administration has said it is targeting Venezuela as part of a push to combat drug trafficking, experts and human rights observers have warned that Washington appears to be laying the groundwork for an attempt to unlawfully remove Maduro from power.<\/p>\n The US has deployed an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean and carried out a series of deadly bombings on vessels it accused of being involved in drug trafficking, killing dozens of people in what United Nations experts have described as extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Trump also warned that he would start targeting Venezuelan drug trafficking \u201cby land\u201d soon.<\/p>\n During a speech broadcast on national television on Thursday, Maduro said Venezuelans would not be intimidated.<\/p>\n The Venezuelan president had said the US \u201cwas increasing what he called \u2018excuses and lies\u2019 to try and justify an intervention in Venezuela, and that was before this announcement was made [on Saturday] by President Trump\u201d, Al Jazeera\u2019s Lucia Newman explained.<\/p>\n Newman said the Trump administration has been \u201csystematically increasing the pressure\u201d on Maduro\u2019s government over several months.<\/p>\n In August, Washington offered a $50m reward for information leading to Maduro\u2019s arrest, doubling a previous sum.<\/p>\n And earlier this week, the US announced it was designating the so-called \u201cCartel de los Soles\u201d, which it asserts is linked to Maduro, as a \u201cterrorist\u201d organisation.<\/p>\n Venezuelans began using the term Cartel de los Soles in the 1990s to refer to high-ranking military officers who had grown rich from drug-running.<\/p>\n At the same time, there have been reports that the US president has spoken with his Venezuelan counterpart.<\/p>\n On Friday, The New York Times reported that Trump spoke with Maduro last week and discussed a possible meeting between the two leaders in the US.<\/p>\n Citing multiple people with knowledge of the matter, the newspaper said there were no plans at the moment for such a meeting, which \u2013 if it were to take place \u2013 would be the first-ever encounter between Maduro and a US president.<\/p>\n Trump is \u201cgoing hot and cold\u201d vis-a-vis Venezuela, said Newman, Al Jazeera\u2019s Latin America editor.<\/p>\n She added that while Trump\u2019s statement on Saturday is \u201can escalation \u2026 on paper\u201d, it remains to be seen whether Washington will attack the country, \u201cwhich is the fear being raised\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you tell airlines not to go to Venezuela, when you say that the airspace has now been closed, you\u2019re sending a very, very aggressive message. Whether this will play out is another matter altogether,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had warned airlines last week of a \u201cpotentially hazardous situation\u201d in Venezuelan airspace due to a \u201cworsening security situation and heightened military activity\u201d.<\/p>\n Six airlines that account for much of the travel in South America then suspended flights to Venezuela.<\/p>\n That drew the ire of Caracas, which suspended the companies\u2019 operating rights and accused them of \u201cjoining the actions of state terrorism promoted by the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n Charles Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Venezuela, said Trump\u2019s announcement on Saturday \u201cturns up the pressure on Maduro\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cClearly what the government of the United States [and] President Trump wants is for Maduro to leave office, and that would mean he\u2019d have to leave the country,\u201d Shapiro told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n He added that while the Trump administration\u2019s claims that its actions are part of a push to stem drug trafficking to the US, the real intention is to remove Maduro.<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0Francisco Rodriguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a US-based think tank, warned of the effects that Trump\u2019s policies will have on the citizens of Venezuela.<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s announcement reflects a \u201cscorched earth\u201d policy towards the country, which for years has been grappling with widespread poverty, unemployment and mass outward migration, Rodriguez wrote on X.<\/p>\n \u201cA country subject to air isolation is a country where medicine and essential supplies cannot enter, and whose citizens cannot travel even for emergency reasons,\u201d he said, adding that the Venezuelan people are not \u201cchess pieces\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n United States President Donald Trump has said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela is to be closed \u201cin its entirety\u201d, as tensions between the countries escalate. There was no immediate response by Venezuela to Trump\u2019s\u00a0social media post on Saturday. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list \u201cTo all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Fear of attacks<\/h2>\n
\u2018Scorched earth\u2019 policy<\/h2>\n
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