Venezuela on Monday denied a plane permission to land to recover the bodies of eight slain Colombians, in a move foreign ministry officials in Bogota described as “extremely serious.”
The people killed were among a dozen kidnapped during a soccer match in the Venezuelan town of Fernandez Feo, in Tachira state.
The standoff over the right to land the Colombian plane on Venezuelan soil was the latest development in ongoing tense relations between the Andean neighbors.
“We fail to understand the reason for the refusal, but it is an extremely serious act,” a Colombian Foreign Ministry official said.
“The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry notified our ambassador that the plane that was to have recovered the bodies of the massacred Colombians would not be allowed to land,” he said.
The Venezuelan embassy in Bogota later said permission to land was denied because Venezuela was already preparing to deliver the bodies, as Colombia’s consul in San Cristobal, Venezuela, had requested on Saturday.
“The transfer operation was already under way,” an embassy statement said.
A Colombian Foreign Ministry official confirmed that Venezuela on Saturday began providing the “logistical and material support ... for a land transfer to the city of Cucuta,” in northeastern Colombia.
In turn, the official said, Colombia requested the coordinates of the Venezuelan operation — presumably to expedite the bodies’ transfer by plane.
Bilateral relations soured anew on Sunday when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez berated Colombia’s Defense Minister Gabriel Silva as a “mental retard” who was beholden to orders from the US government in the wake of a US deal to use seven Colombian military bases.
“The Colombian defense minister — this mentally feeble, if not mentally retarded guy — takes orders from the empire,” said Chavez, using one of his favorite epithets for the US during his Hello, Mr President weekly broadcast.
The Colombian diplomatic official said Bogota was reviewing its options, including the possibility of traveling via land to recover the bodies from the site near the Venezuelan border.
The Venezuelan embassy said Caracas security forces were “working intensely to clear up this regrettable incident.”
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
RSS