US sends 900 troops to Venezuela for earthquake relief, Reuters says

More than 900 U.S. military personnel are now inside Venezuela to support earthquake relief, an extraordinary deployment in a country long defined in Washington by sanctions and confrontation. Another roughly 800 troops are staged in Caribbean hubs including Puerto Rico and Curacao, while Gen. Francis Donovan said U.S. forces are already helping with search-and-rescue operations, reopening an airport and shifting air and naval assets so aid can move faster.

The mission has also brought American intelligence tools directly into the disaster zone. Donovan said the operation included four or five MQ-9 Reaper drones flying over Venezuela and a fusion cell in Miami that helped build a clearer picture for Venezuelan authorities. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Jarrard was on the ground in Caracas overseeing the support effort for the U.S. military, a rare sight in a country where the relationship with the United States has been dominated by pressure on President Nicolas Maduro and his government.

The response began after the twin earthquakes on June 24 and was launched at the request of Venezuela’s interim authorities, with the U.S. effort coordinated through the State Department and other agencies. That coordination has put U.S. personnel alongside Venezuelan officials at a moment when the scale of the disaster has overwhelmed local capacity and pulled in teams from across the hemisphere.

In La Guaira, more than 100 people stood silently beside what had been the Los Cocos public housing complex, where six of eight towers were destroyed. Mexican, Ecuadorian and U.S. rescue crews worked through the ruins as rescue efforts stretched into a sixth day, by which point only one survivor, a 3-year-old child, had been pulled out. The United Nations said more than 2,000 rescue workers from 27 countries had been deployed with UN support, while a preliminary assessment put direct physical damage at $6.7 billion.

The earthquakes measured magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 and early reports pushed the death toll above 1,400. For now, the emergency has created one of the few active channels of U.S.-Venezuela cooperation, built around soldiers, drones and rescue gear rather than the sanctions and political isolation that have defined the relationship for years.