Venezuela’s military held a funeral in Caracas on Wednesday for dozens of soldiers killed during a U.S. operation that Venezuela said captured former President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The ceremony took place at the cemetery, where music from a military orchestra echoed as family members and soldiers marched behind a row of caskets. Men carried the wooden caskets, cloaked in the Venezuelan flag, past rows of uniformed officers, the report said.
“Thank you for letting them embrace a military career,” military commander Rafael Murillo said to families surrounding him at the cemetery on the city’s south side, according to the Associated Press report.
The men were honored with a gun salute as the caskets were lowered into the ground, while the report said their loved ones wailed. Armed National Guard members patrolled parts of the cemetery for hours before and during the ceremony that followed an emotional wake.
The funeral came a day after acting President Delcy Rodríguez declared a seven-day mourning period for the fallen officers, the report said.
Venezuela’s military has said at least 24 Venezuelan officers were killed in a dead-of-night U.S. operation carried out to capture Maduro and Flores and spirit them to New York to face drug charges. Maduro and Flores each pleaded not guilty to the charges in a U.S. court Monday, the report said.
On Wednesday, Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on state television that at least 100 people were killed and a similar number were injured during the U.S. operation, while he did not provide a breakdown of civilians and armed-forces members or their nationalities, according to the report.
Cuba has said 32 Cuban military and police officers working in Venezuela were killed in the U.S. operation, the report said. Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, said prosecutors would investigate the deaths in what he described as a war crime.
The Venezuelan military also posted on Instagram that the deaths call for justice and strength, and it said it would not rest until it rescues Maduro and dismantles armed groups operating from abroad. The report cited the post’s language calling the operation an affront that should “never again” sully Venezuela’s sovereign soil.