This is the moment an Air Force jet chases a drug trafficker plane in a one-sided dogfight in the skies above Venezuela that ended with the two Mexican suspects on the suspect's plane dead.

Footage captured in the skies above the Latin American country on Saturday, July 14, shows the fighter jet chasing the much slower Cessna C402B with the serial number 0347.

The images show the drug traffickers' aircraft trying to escape the fighter jet after it crossed into Venezuelan airspace, but it is no match for the much faster and heavily armed military aircraft.

The burned wreckage was then seen after it crashed into a field in the rural area of El Chaparral in Venezuela's state of Portuguesa.

Domingo Hernandez Larez, the Strategic Operational Commander of the Venezuelan Air Force, said that the drug traffickers plane was registered in the United States.

And the Minister of the Interior, Remigio Ceballos Ichaso, said that the two people on board the aircraft were Mexican citizens who were involved in international drug trafficking.

Hernandez Larezsaid in a statement: 'In exercise of the nation's security and defence plans, on July 14 2024, faced with the alleged violation of airspace and national sovereignty by an aircraft, the Early Warning Plan was activated, where the deployment of air and ground resources of the #FANB [Venezuelan Air Force] was ordered in assistance missions, reconnaissance, search and location of targets of interest, with the consequent detection on the CODAI and FIR Maiquetia radars of the illegal entry of alow-flying vector, in flagrant violation of national sovereignty.

'It should be noted that in accordance with the Law of Control for the Comprehensive Defence of Airspace, which aims to establish the rules that govern the control for the comprehensive defence of continental, insular and maritime airspace of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in the exercise of our national sovereignty and in attention to the highest interests of security and comprehensive defence for the application of actions of interception, persuasion and neutralization of any aircraft or object that violates the provisions on air traffic, being declared the vector located in flight as a hostile target and not being identified, turning off the locator, transponder and hiding the identification plates, the air interdiction and interception was ordered.

'Upon locating the plane, current procedures were followed to persuade it and force it to land with an escort, but it ignored orders in an attempt to evade the FANB combat aircraft and carried out low-level evasive manoeuvres until it made an emergency landing in a field near Turen, Portuguesa state, where it crashed at coordinates 09 35' N 069 05'W.

'According to information obtained by URRA ground reconnaissance units, the following information was obtained at the scene: Piper PA-34-200T Seneca II aircraft, registration PR-RP. A deceased crew member was also found next to the aircraft, as well as traces of criminal interest, such as a Mexican passport and an American flight license, as well as other materials that link the aircraft to drug trafficking.

'Venezuela is a territory of peace and we will not allow our spaces to be used for the purposes of the scourge of drug trafficking. It should be noted that on May 10, two (02) aircraft were disabled in said area of ​​interest, and a clandestine runway prepared as an airfield and clandestine platform was disabled.'