Venezuela installs powerful anti-aircraft weapons

Venezuela is in the process of installing a powerful anti-aircraft weapons system to protect against incursions into its airspace, President Nicolas Maduro announced.

"We are installing the most powerful system in the world in all mountain ranges, mountains, corridors, in the Venezuelan plains, along maritime and territorial borders. Our homeland is unassailable, nobody will be able to touch even an inch of our homeland, it is sacred," Maduro said Wednesday in a televised broadcast from eastern Sucre state, aired by state-run VTV.

Maduro said the anti-aircraft weapons system is being installed along the mountain range that runs through eastern Venezuela "so that some foreign airplane will never be able to enter and desecrate the sacred sky of the Venezuelan homeland", reported Xinhua.

The president is in Sucre to promote his administration's Street Government programme, which aims to bring the federal government closer to the people so it can resolve local problems. He also called for a socially, morally and ethically "strong" armed forces.