The U.S. military has established a robust footprint of U.S. forces in and around Venezuela to support relief operations, with more than 900 personnel inside the country and another roughly 800 in Caribbean hubs Puerto Rico and Curacao, the top U.S. general for Latin America told Reuters.
General Francis Donovan, the commander of U.S. Southern Command, said U.S. forces had participated in search-and-rescue operations, helped get the airport up and running and mobilized air and naval assets to allow for the arrival of humanitarian relief after last week's devastating earthquakes.
He said the U.S. military had also deployed at least four or five MQ-9 Reaper drones over Venezuela, which, along with a fusion cell in Miami, is bolstering the intelligence picture for Venezuelan authorities.
It is a remarkable turn of events for the U.S. military, which on January 3 carried out a raid to kidnap Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and fly him to New York.
Venezuela was hit by two earthquakes of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 less than a minute apart last Wednesday, toppling buildings and trapping thousands of people beneath the rubble.
MNA