WASHINGTON: The United States sent 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico as part of its war on drug cartels amid mounting tensions with Venezuela over Washington’s military build-up in the Caribbean.

The planes will join US warships already deplo­yed to the southern Carib­bean as President Donald Trump steps up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the United States accuses of leading a drug cartel.

The standoff has grown in recent days as the Pentagon said two Vene­zuelan military planes flew near a US Navy vessel in international waters on Thursday in a “highly provocative” move.

US forces on Tuesday blew up an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean that Trump said belonged to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organisation he tied to Maduro, killing 11 people.

The high-tech F-35 jets will be deployed to an airfield in Puerto Rico, a US Caribbean island territory of more than three million people.

Maduro — a leftist firebrand whose election victory last year was seen by Washington as illegitimate — has denounced the US build-up as “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years”.

Declaring his country prepared for “armed struggle in defence of the national territory”, he has mobilised Venezuela’s mili­tary, which numbers 340,000, and ‘eight million reservists’.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2025