At least five U.S. F-35 fighter jets arrive at the Ceiba base in Puerto Rico

San Juan.- At least five F-35 fighter jets from the United States Navy arrived at the runway of the José Aponte de la Torre regional airport, the former Roosevelt Roads, base in the municipality of Ceiba, in northeastern Puerto Rico, fueling tension in the Caribbean.

Also, a Boeing C-5 aircraft of the U.S. Armed Forces was spotted at that same base, according to local media reports.

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These planes join the US deployment of eight military ships with missiles and a nuclear-powered submarine, near the Venezuelan coast, under the argument of combating drug trafficking. An action that the Venezuelan government considers an attempt to promote a “regime change” in the South American country. Venezuela’s Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino López, denounced this Sunday that the United States is carrying out “intelligence” flights against the South American country, in a context in which he assured that Washington wants to justify a “plan of military threat and intervention” to “displace President Nicolás Maduro.” The Venezuelan Executive assured on Saturday that a U.S. “destroyer” “deployed eighteen personnel with long weapons” and occupied the vessel on Friday, where “nine humble fishermen” were located, who were in the “Venezuelan Exclusive Economic Zone”. In this context, Venezuela ordered the mobilization of ships, the enlistment of millions of militiamen, and a “special reinforcement” of the military presence in five coastal regions of the country. Upon receiving U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth this week, the governor of Puerto Rico, Jenniffer González, stated that her government “is committed to this fight against drug trafficking” and called Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “leader of the cartel in Venezuela”. For his part, Maduro urged González to personally lead a possible “invasion” against his country, after the president confirmed that the U.S. will continue sending planes to the island as part of the military deployment that Washington maintains in the Caribbean. The governor’s desire to turn the island into the U.S. Army’s operations and logistics center in the Caribbean is not shared by the opposition nor by many citizens who have organized several protests. The U.S. used to have eleven military bases in Puerto Rico and, currently, the National Guard continues to use Buchanan, Fort Allen, Muñiz Air Base and Camp Santiago, as well as parts of Ramey and Roosevelt Roads bases. The U.S. Navy used part of the islands – municipality of Vieques and Culebra, in the east of the archipelago – as a firing range, rented those areas to other nations to test their weaponry and, as of today, the cleaning of the remains of undetonated ammunition has not yet been completed.