As Venezuelans begin to pick up the rubble following massive air strikes by the United States over the weekend, the full scope of the destruction is slowly coming into focus.
As Agence France-Presse reports, Venezuelan officials say the US air strikes that killed at least 56 soldiers also destroyed numerous non-military targets, including the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC).
On Wednesday, the country’s science and technology minister Gabriela Jimenez shared footage of an obliterated building which she says housed the mathematics department at the IVIC. On top of this, Jimenez said that four other IVIC buildings were targeted for destruction: the physics, chemistry, ecology, and nuclear research centers.
“Two missiles struck the area directly,” Jimenez wrote on Telegram referencing the mathematics center, per AFP which translated the comment. “The attack was total: these areas housed servers and equipment essential to our computer networks that were completely devastated.”
The minister characterized the attacks as an “unprecedented act of imperial aggression.”
Why the institute was targeted is unclear. The IVIC is located on the southwestern outskirts of Caracas, nearly 11 miles away from the Fuerte Tiuna, the military installation from which Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were kidnapped by US special forces on Saturday.
In addition to the academic buildings, the governor of La Guaira, Jose Alejandro Teran, said the US air strikes destroyed a medicine warehouse located on the coastal city near Caracas.
“Tons of medicine burned to ash, tons of food,” Teran said in a video posted on social media. “Here are the results of what the bombs and missiles of the United States government have done… to destroy our warehouses full of medicine and food.”
Though Trump has emphasized the deaths of Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers, numerous civilians also lost their lives in the barrage. Those fatalities include 45-year old single mother Yohana Rodríguez Sierra, who was killed by a US missile. At least one of Sierra’s daughters was injured in the missile strike.
At least 150 US war planes and drones took part in the devastation, which the Trump administration and American media have characterized as a “precision operation.”
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