CARACAS, July 22 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. spy plane that trespassed Venezuelan airspace put commercial flights at risk, Minister of Communication and Information Jorge Rodriguez said on Monday.
The aircraft was said to have flown into a Venezuelan flight control zone on Friday morning.
"Any aircraft in that zone must contact the control tower for that zone," he said.
"If there is a plane in the zone and it hasn't identified itself, where it took off from, what its route is and where it is going to land, it puts any other plane flying in the area at risk," he added.
"There are photographs of the U.S. plane. It was a U.S. spy plane. Its intention was aggression against Venezuela and our armed forces acted accordingly," said Rodriguez.
In the past three months, Venezuelan defense systems have detected "a total of 78 violations of Venezuelan air space ... by U.S. aircraft," he said.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Southern Command attempted to "distort" what took place on Friday by tweeting misleading information, said Rodriguez.
On Sunday, the Southern Command accused Venezuela of "aggressively shadowing" one of its aircraft "at an unsafe distance" two days earlier.
The U.S. EP-3 "was performing a multi-nationally recognized and approved mission in international airspace over (the) Caribbean Sea," the U.S. military said.
Relations between the two countries have been hostile as the United State strives to help Venezuela's far-right opposition regain control of government.
