Venezuelan authorities on Wednesday denounced the destruction of non-military infrastructure during the US bombing that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, including a scientific facility and a medicine warehouse near the capital.
The US military attacked Caracas and three other states in an operation on January 3 to capture the deposed president and his wife, Cilia Flores, in which at least one civilian and 56 Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers were killed.
The Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, said after the bombing that populations were affected and that he would offer information on injuries and deaths, although there is still no official report.
The Minister of Science and Technology, Gabriela Jiménez, broadcast a video on her Telegram channel that shows the destruction of one of the buildings of the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC), located on the outskirts of Caracas. “Two missiles directly hit the area,” he said.
“The attack has been total: these areas housed servers and essential equipment for our computer networks that were completely devastated,” Jiménez explained.
The images show the place full of rubble, melted metal structures and missile fragments. Four other IVIC buildings also suffered damage, the minister added.
The damage also reached La Guaira, a port state neighboring Caracas, where the missiles hit residential areas and at least one civilian death occurred. The governor of the state, Alejandro Terán, denounced the destruction of a warehouse containing suspected medicines.
“Tons of medicine, tons of food burned,” he said in a video published on his social networks, without providing evidence to corroborate that the affected material was related to medical supplies.
Terán assured that the president in charge, Delcy Rodríguez, “has everything under control” in the area.
