(Trinidad Express) Venezuelan Minister of Defence Vladimir Padrino Lopez says that the majority President Nicolas’ Maduro’s security detail was killed in the Saturday morning US operation that extracted him and his wife Cilia Flores from their compound in Caracas.
On Saturday, Padrino had indicated that in the aftermath of reported US strikes on at least four military and civilian locations overnight, the country was still attempting to determine the number of deaths that had occurred.
The New York Times has however reported that Venezuelan officials estimated at least 40 to have been killed as a result of the operation, named “Absolute Resolve” by US forces.
In reading from a statement at a press conference on Sunday, Padrino said that the Bolivarian National Armed Forces forcefully rejected the “cowardly kidnapping of citizen Nicolás Maduro Moros, Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, our Commander-in-Chief, and of his wife, the First Lady, Dr. Cilia Flores de Maduro an act perpetrated yesterday, Saturday, January 3 of the current year after the cold-blooded killing of a large part of his security team, soldiers, guards, and aides.”
