VENEZUELAN Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez has been appointed interim leader by her country’s high court following the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro in a US military raid on Caracas.

Nonetheless, speaking on state TV on Saturday, she insisted: “There is only one president in Venezuela and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moros.” She called on the United States to release him.

Mr Maduro landed at a small New York airport on Saturday afternoon following the middle-of-the-night operation that abducted him and his wife Cilia Flores from their home in a military base in Caracas.

A White House social-media video showed Mr Maduro smiling defiantly while being escorted through a Drug Enforcement Administration office with two of the agency’s operatives grasping his arms.

The US administration accuses the couple of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

However, US President Donald Trump told a Mar-a-Lago news conference of plans to exploit Mr Maduro’s removal to “fix” Venezuela’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.

Mr Trump claimed that the US government was helping to govern Venezuela, though there were no immediately visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro coverage and broadcast live images of his supporters taking to the streets of Caracas in protest.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” the US president said.

He claimed that Ms Rodriguez would collaborate with the US plans, saying that she was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” though she has given no indication that this is true.

Mr Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in the US in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges.

The US Justice Department issued a new indictment of the presidential couple on Saturday that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fuelled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the US with cocaine.

The Trump administration spent months building up military forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, claiming that they were transporting illegal drugs.

Saturday’s attack was heralded by multiple explosions ringing out in Caracas as aircraft swept low over the city.

Venezuela’s government accused the US of hitting civilian and military installations in an “imperialist attack” and urged citizens to take to the streets.

Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Ms Rodriguez, who didn’t give a number; Mr Trump said that US troops had been wounded.