About eight Venezuelan troopers have died in the course of the operations, which have induced about 5,000 folks to flee throughout the border.
Venezuelan forces detained members of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel throughout clashes with armed teams close to its western border with Colombia, a high Venezuelan navy official stated on Friday.
Venezuela’s navy on March 21 launched an offensive towards what officers known as irregular Colombian armed teams within the western state of Apure.
About eight Venezuelan troopers have died in the course of the operations, which have induced about 5,000 folks to flee throughout the border.
“We even captured some people from the Sinaloa cartel,” the chief of Venezuela’s strategic operational command, Remigio Ceballos, stated in a phone name broadcast on state tv.
Ceballos didn’t specify the names of the folks detained, nor what number of cartel members have been taken into custody. He stated some people from Brazil have been additionally detained, and stated all can be offered to the nation’s courts.
The combating occurred close to the border city of La Victoria, about 628 km (390 miles) southwest of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.
Venezuela’s data ministry didn’t instantly reply to a request for additional particulars in regards to the arrests.
Colombia’s authorities has stated that the Sinaloa cartel is energetic within the South American nation and has alliances with native insurgent teams, together with the Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN) and former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who’ve rejected a 2016 peace deal.
Venezuela, which this week created a particular navy unit for the border area, has not specified which teams it’s combating alongside the border.
Critics of President Nicolas Maduro have stated the fighters embrace dissident FARC fighters who his authorities had beforehand accommodated.