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CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Monday that eight US military vessels with 1,200 missiles were targeting his country, which he declared to be in a state of “maximum readiness to defend” itself.
The United States, which accuses Maduro of heading a drug cartel, has announced a deployment of warships to the south Caribbean in what it labeled an anti-drug trafficking operation. It has made no invasion threat.
Yet Maduro railed at a meeting with international media in Caracas Monday against “the greatest threat that has been seen on our continent in the last 100 years” in the form of “eight military ships with 1,200 missiles and a submarine targeting Venezuela.”
One of the ships, a guided missile cruiser, was spotted going through the Panama Canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean Friday night.
Maduro said that “in response to maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum readiness to defend Venezuela.”
He said more than eight million Venezuelans have enlisted as reservists. Caracas has already announced increased patrols of its territorial waters.
Washington has doubled to $50 million a bounty for the capture of Maduro, whose re-election in 2024 and 2018 were not recognized by the United States or much of the international community amid allegations of fraud and voter oppression.

Known for his fiery, often anti-US tirades, Maduro on Monday said lines of communication with the United States have broken down, and vowed his country “will never give in to blackmail or threats of any kind.”
At the press conference, he warned that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to lead President Donald Trump “into a bloodbath... with a massacre against the people of Venezuela.”
The US military deployment was welcomed, however, by Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali as “anything to eliminate any threat to our security.”
Georgetown and Caracas are engaged in a dispute over the oil-rich border region of Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory but is also claimed by Venezuela.
The bilateral rhetoric has escalated since ExxonMobil discovered massive oil deposits a decade ago off the coast of Essequibo, which has been administered by Guyana for over 100 years.

Maduro has been in Trump’s crosshairs since the Republican’s first term from 2017 to 2021.
But Trump’s policy of maximum pressure on Venezuela, including an oil embargo, has failed to dislodge Maduro from power.
Analysts have told AFP the US military deployment was unlikely to result in any invasion or attack, but rather sought to ramp up pressure on Maduro — who has repeatedly accused Trump of attempting to bring about regime change.
Last week, Caracas petitioned the United Nations to intervene in the dispute by demanding “the immediate cessation of the US military deployment in the Caribbean.”
On Monday, Maduro said Venezuela was prepared for “a period of armed struggle in defense of the national territory” in case of an attack.

HANOVER: A group of 47 Afghans who fled the Taliban arrived in Germany on Monday after months of waiting in Pakistan until German court rulings forced Berlin to offer them refuge.

The 10 families have been among more than 2,000 Afghans caught in limbo in Pakistan as Germany’s conservative-led government this year froze a program to offer them sanctuary.

Most of them arrived in Hanover on a commercial flight from Istanbul around 2:00 p.m. (1200 GMT), said an AFP reporter and the Airbridge Kabul initiative set up to help those affected.

An interior ministry spokeswoman confirmed that “45 Afghan nationals entered Germany. These are all individuals who obtained visas through legal proceedings... All of these individuals have fully completed the admission procedure and security screening.”

The Airbridge Kabul initiative later said that two more people had arrived after catching a later connection from Istanbul.

A mother and daughter who did not want to give their names told AFP they were looking forward to their new life in Germany.

“It feels very good and pleasant when girls can go to school, study, and I can also work, study, integrate into society, and learn the language,” the mother said.

“I am very happy that after many difficulties and challenges, we finally managed to reach a good life,” said the daughter, aged 20.

“I could have done many things, studied, achieved a position and reached the goals I had for myself, but unfortunately, I couldn’t. From now on, I will achieve them,” she said.

Sanctuary scheme

After the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Germany set up a scheme to offer sanctuary to Afghans who had worked for German institutions or were otherwise deemed at high risk of persecution, including rights activists and journalists.

But the scheme was frozen under conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who took office in May, as part of a wider crackdown on immigration.

While the Afghans have been left stranded in Pakistan, authorities there have also stepped up a crackdown on Afghans living in the country without residency.

Last month, Berlin said around 450 Afghans waiting to come to Germany had been detained, and more than 200 of them were sent back to their Taliban-run homeland.

While alarm has grown about their fate, Germany has agreed to resume accepting some of the others.

The government said last week that Afghans for whom “courts have found that Germany is legally obliged to issue visas” would travel to Germany “in stages” once they had cleared security checks.

The 10 main applicants who arrived on Monday were eight women and two men who had been involved in “politics, the justice system and journalism,” said Eva Beyer, a spokeswoman for the Airbridge Kabul initiative.

Around 85 other stranded Afghans have begun legal proceedings against Germany, “and there are more every day,” Beyer said.