GENEVA: US air strikes on Venezuela and the seizing of the country´s president on the weekend clearly “undermined a fundamental principle of international law”, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
“States must not threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told reporters in Geneva.
“And this is what we are seeing,” she said, calling on the international community to “come together with one voice... to make clear that this is an action that in contravention of the international law that was set up by member states”.
US commandos backed by warplanes, the navy and air strikes, forcibly seized Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in the early hours of Saturday.
Maduro appeared in court in New York on Monday to deny drug trafficking and other charges brought by Washington, insisting he had been kidnapped and remained Venezuela´s president.
He became president in 2013 after taking over from his populist mentor Hugo Chavez.
The United States and European Union say Maduro stayed in power by rigging elections -- most recently in 2024 -- and imprisoning opponents, while overseeing rampant corruption.
Shamdasani said the UN rights office had spent years reporting on the “continued deterioration” in Venezuela.
But she dismissed US justifications for its actions, saying accountability for rights violations “cannot be achieved by unilateral military intervention in violation of international law”.
Meanwhile, US forces killed 55 Venezuelan and Cuban military personnel during their stunning raid to capture Nicolas Maduro, tolls published by Caracas and Havana showed on Tuesday.In the first confirmation of its losses, Venezuela´s military said 23 of its service members died in Saturday´s attacks by the United States, which led to the ouster of Maduro as the country´s leader.
Caracas has yet to give an official figure for civilian casualties.Cuba, which had already announced that 32 members of its armed forces and interior ministry security personnel assigned to duties in Caracas were killed in the raids, also listed its dead.They ranged in age from 26 to 67 and included two colonels and one lieutenant colonel.
