Post by scumbuster on Sept 19, 2015 3:55:55 GMT -5
CARACAS – Both pilots aboard the fighter jet that crashed while on patrol along the border with Colombia were killed, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Friday.
“My condolences to the families of our Bolivarian Capts. Ronald Ramirez Sanchez and Jackson Garcia Betancourt fallen on a Mission,” Maduro wrote on Twitter.
The officers will receive posthumous promotions to the rank of major, the president said.
“Honor and Glory to these worthy and valiant Warriors of the Air ... the struggle for the Motherland Continues,” Maduro wrote.
The air force is on duty “24 hours defending and protecting Venezuela from the scourge of narco-trafficking, despite the attacks from the swine,” the leftist head of state said in a subsequent message.
The plane, a Russian-made Su-30, went down at around 9:07 p.m. Thursday after detecting “an aircraft that entered the northwestern region of the country illegally,” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said earlier in a statement disclosing the crash.
The jet crashed in an area of Venezuelan territory used by narco-traffickers “as a platform for distributing drugs produced in the neighboring country (Colombia) to Central America and the Caribbean,” the minister said.
Venezuelan authorities are still investigating the cause of the crash, which comes as the Maduro administration maintains a lockdown covering roughly two-thirds of Venezuela’s 2,219-kilometer (1,379-mile) border with Colombia.
The closure was first imposed Aug. 19 in six municipalities of the western state of Tachira after suspected Colombian paramilitaries fired shots that wounded three Venezuelan soldiers and a civilian.
On Aug. 28 Maduro extended the measure to four more municipalities in Tachira, a decision the president defended as part of the fight against organized crime and smuggling, and the number of closed border towns has since climbed to 23.
Maduro and his Colombian counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos, are due to meet next Monday in Quito for talks on the border crisis.
“My condolences to the families of our Bolivarian Capts. Ronald Ramirez Sanchez and Jackson Garcia Betancourt fallen on a Mission,” Maduro wrote on Twitter.
The officers will receive posthumous promotions to the rank of major, the president said.
“Honor and Glory to these worthy and valiant Warriors of the Air ... the struggle for the Motherland Continues,” Maduro wrote.
The air force is on duty “24 hours defending and protecting Venezuela from the scourge of narco-trafficking, despite the attacks from the swine,” the leftist head of state said in a subsequent message.
The plane, a Russian-made Su-30, went down at around 9:07 p.m. Thursday after detecting “an aircraft that entered the northwestern region of the country illegally,” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said earlier in a statement disclosing the crash.
The jet crashed in an area of Venezuelan territory used by narco-traffickers “as a platform for distributing drugs produced in the neighboring country (Colombia) to Central America and the Caribbean,” the minister said.
Venezuelan authorities are still investigating the cause of the crash, which comes as the Maduro administration maintains a lockdown covering roughly two-thirds of Venezuela’s 2,219-kilometer (1,379-mile) border with Colombia.
The closure was first imposed Aug. 19 in six municipalities of the western state of Tachira after suspected Colombian paramilitaries fired shots that wounded three Venezuelan soldiers and a civilian.
On Aug. 28 Maduro extended the measure to four more municipalities in Tachira, a decision the president defended as part of the fight against organized crime and smuggling, and the number of closed border towns has since climbed to 23.
Maduro and his Colombian counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos, are due to meet next Monday in Quito for talks on the border crisis.