Donald Trump has claimed that US forces struck a “big facility” in Venezuela last week – but the president did not specify what it was, or where, and the White House has not commented further.
“We just knocked out – I don’t know if you read or you saw – they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump told Republican donor and New York supermarket owner John Catsimatidis on Friday.
Trump on Monday went further in his characterization of the strike, saying: “Well, it doesn’t matter. But there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs. We hit the area.”
Speaking after a meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the president said: “So we hit all the boats and now we hit the implementation area… where they implement and that’s no longer around.”
Trump confirmed in October that he had authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations in Venezuela.
“I authorized for two reasons really. Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America ... they came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “And the other thing are drugs,” he added.
If a US strike or covert action is confirmed, it will mark the first land strike on Venezuela since the Pentagon began a buildup of US strike forces in region to interdict drug traffickers operating – the Trump administration claims – under the direction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
The initial, stated purpose of the military buildup has since morphed into a blockade to disrupt the country’s oil exports that uses a global shadow fleet of oil tankers outside of Chevron, the single licensed exporter of Venezuelan oil.
Trump has for weeks warned that US forces are ready to expand the military campaign by striking targets inside Venezuela, a tactic that would in theory require congressional authorization.
Video footage posted online on 24 December appeared to show an explosion said to be from the industrial zone of the San Francisco municipality in Zulia state.
However, the video or the facility has not been independently verified. An administration official told CNN that the president was describing a drug facility in his comments to Catsimatidis.
The Venezuelan government has not commented on the incident Trump described and there have been no independent reports from Venezuela of it.
The buildup of US military in the region – a posture the White House calls a maritime “quarantine” around Venezuela – marks the most expansive maritime enforcement action of Trump’s presidency.
Administration officials have stopped short of describing the action as a blockade but have acknowledged that about 15,000 personnel are positioned across the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, including a carrier strike group, F-35s and Coast Guard cutters to enforce existing sanctions.
