The Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment is again call­ing on the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary to de­sist from pro­vok­ing a war in Caribbean wa­ters af­ter it claimed that a US war­ship “il­le­gal­ly as­sault­ed” a fish­ing ves­sel with nine tu­na fish­er­men on board.

The South Amer­i­can na­tion is ad­vis­ing the US to leave the re­gion and call­ing on Amer­i­cans to re­ject the use of its sol­diers as “sac­ri­fi­cial pawns”.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment claimed that on Sep­tem­ber 12, “The Venezue­lan ves­sel, Car­men Rosa, manned by nine hum­ble fish­er­men, sail­ing 48 nau­ti­cal miles north­east of La Blan­quil­la Is­land, in wa­ters be­long­ing to the Venezue­lan Ex­clu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone (EEZ), was il­le­gal­ly and hos­tile (sic) as­sault­ed by the US Navy de­stroy­er USS Ja­son Dun­ham, equipped with pow­er­ful cruise mis­siles and manned by high­ly trained marines.”