The mother of a Venezuelan 18-year-old recalled the last message her son sent her as the U.S. operation to capture authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro began.
“I love you. It has begun,” Saul Pereira Martinez told his mother. Natividad Martinez, his mother, said her son had finished his shift on guard duty at Fuerte Tiuna, but was caught in the assault. He had just completed initial training with the Honor Guard in December and was studying at the military academy.
CBS News noted that 47 Venezuelan soldiers were killed in the operation. Martinez’s unit was spending the night within the security perimeter around Maduro.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared last week a social media post alleging details of the operation, including a claim that the military used a weapon that led Venezuelan forces to vomit blood during the raid.
According to the post, Venezuelan forces’ “radar systems shut down without any explanation.” “The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions,” he added.
The guard went on to say that only a “small number” of ground forces arrived in the premises, but they were “technologically very advanced” and “didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before.”
The guard then noted that Venezuelan forces attempted to fight, but the confrontation was a “massacre.” “We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed… it seemed like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute. We couldn’t do anything,” he added. Overall, some 100 Venezuelan forces were killed in the January 3 attack, according to Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.
Asked if their weapons had chances to pose some kind of counter-attack to U.S. forces, the guard said no because “it wasn’t just the weapons.” “At one point, they launched something—I don’t know how to describe it… it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move,” the guard noted,
He added that he had “never seen anything like it” and most “couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was.” The interviewer then asked the guard if he thought the rest of the region “should think twice before confronting the Americans,” to which he answered “without a doubt.”
“I’m sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they’re capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They’re not to be messed with.”
Originally published on Latin Times
