Colombia sends 30,000 troops to Venezuela border following US strikes

Colombia is shoring up its military presence on the border with Venezuela following the US operation in Venezuela at the weekend, which resulted in the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.

Mr Maduro pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism and other charges in a New York court on Monday. His wife Cilia Flores, who was also captured, pleaded not guilty too.

State-owned Radio Nacional de Colombia said that the government had ordered the deployment of 30,000 troops to the border region with the aim of “anticipating and responding” to events in the area.

Multiple explosions heard in Venezuela’s capital Caracas 00:43

Angie Lizeth Rodriguez, director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency, said the order, issued on Sunday, was part of a strategy to “protect sovereignty, for defence and territorial integrity” and to safeguard border communities amid heightened regional tension.

The porous Colombia-Venezuela is a major site of the bustling regional drug and weapons trade. Colombian soldiers and security forces often skirmish with the guerrilla and criminal groups active in the region.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has frequently locked horns with US President Donald Trump over immigration and the drug trade, and he has taken a defiant stance against Washington, with concerns high that the intervention will not stop with Venezuela.

In November, Colombian media reported that both Mr Petro and Mr Maduro appeared in a White House photo in which a presidential aide can be seen holding a dossier with an artificial intelligence-generated photo of the two leaders in orange prison jumpsuits. The file also appeared to contain a document titled “The Trump Doctrine for Colombia and the Western Hemisphere”.

“Although I have not been a military man, I know about war and clandestineness. I swore not to touch a weapon again after the 1989 Peace Pact, but for the homeland, I will take up arms, that I do not want, again,” Mr Petro said in a post on X on Sunday, referring to his former time as a guerrilla with the M-19 movement. “I am not illegitimate, nor am I a narco.”

Mr Trump on Sunday described Mr Petro as "a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States".

Colombia is the world's leading cocaine producer.