President Trump said that the US military had “knocked out” a Venezuelan facility in what would mark a major escalation in a campaign on alleged drug trafficking in the South American country.
The White House is ratcheting up the pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas and Trump has not ruled out declaring war.
In a radio interview on Friday, Trump praised his administration’s strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats before telling the hosts of an attack on a “big plant or big facility”.
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“We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said. “Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
It was unclear what Trump was referring to.
US officials told The New York Times that the president was discussing a drug facility in Venezuela that was destroyed but offered no further details.
The incident could mark the first known land strike on Venezuela during Trump’s months-long pressure campaign, which began as an anti-narcotics operation but could transform into a regime-change effort.
The US military’s Southern Command later said it “conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organisations in international waters”, killing two men.
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The attack brings the total number of vessels hit by US strikes, and accused of smuggling drugs, to 30. The number of people known to have died because of the strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean since September is now 107.
The US has accused Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian socialist ruler, of being at the head of a drug cartel. Venezuela’s government has dismissed the allegation as “ridiculous” and says the Cartel de los Soles does not exist.
President Maduro has been accused by the US of running a cartel
MIRAFLORES PALACE/REUTERS
The US has ramped up its military presence in the region and announced a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela in an attempt to deprive Maduro’s regime of a crucial economic lifeline.
The US Coast Guard has intercepted at least two tankers in the Caribbean Sea in the last month, both of which were loaded with Venezuelan crude oil.
Trump has warned Maduro that his days in power are numbered. “If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump said last week.
China urged the US to de-escalate tensions in the region while Russia’s UN ambassador warned: “This intervention which is unfolding can become a template for future acts of force against Latin American states.”
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As well as alleged drug trafficking, Trump has accused Maduro of sending violent criminals from his own country into the US.
“Well, it’s about a lot of things,” Trump said. “It’s about that. It’s about, you know, they took our oil, they took it, and they also sent millions of people in there from jails into our country, from jail, some of the worst people on earth.”