Donald Trump said the United States had carried out a strike on a “dock area” in Venezuela, thereby confirming that American forces had operated directly on the country’s territory.
“There was a major explosion in the dock area where the boats are loaded with drugs,” the president said when asked about the strike carried out on Monday, December 29, ahead of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We destroyed all the boats and then struck…the implementation area. That is where they carry out their operations, and it no longer exists,” Trump added.
The president did not specify whether US armed forces or the CIA were involved in the attack and declined to confirm whether any additional strikes had been carried out.
In an interview with a radio station last Friday, Trump said that earlier in the same week the United States had destroyed a “large [drug] facility…from which the boats depart” as part of its campaign against Venezuelan drug traffickers. He suggested that the public had probably already “read” about the strike, but did not disclose its location.
It remained unclear whether this referred to the same “major explosion” or to a separate incident—an explosion that occurred on Christmas Eve at a coastal chemical plant in the Venezuelan city of San Francisco.
The chemical company Primazol on Monday “categorically rejected” suggestions that the United States was involved in the explosion at its facility.
“We responsibly state that these claims have no connection whatsoever to the incident in question and do not correspond to any official or verified information,” the company said. Primazol declined to say what had caused the explosion.
President Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration has designated the head of a “foreign terrorist” drug cartel, has previously described the expansion of the US naval presence in the Caribbean as a pretext for his overthrow.
Neither Maduro, who addressed Venezuela’s armed forces on Sunday, nor interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who held a press conference on Monday, commented on Trump’s statement or on the explosion at the chemical plant.
“For 27 weeks Venezuela has been threatened by Goliath, and for those 27 weeks our armed forces have remained deployed, acting with intelligence, wisdom, and strategic patience,” Maduro said during his Sunday address.
The Trump administration says it has carried out 29 strikes since September on suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing at least 105 people. The two most recent US attacks on boats were conducted on December 22.