Donald Trump hailed his overnight blitz on Venezuela to capture Nicolas Maduro as the greatest military operation since World War II.
Giving an update this evening from his Mar-a-Lago resort, the president said the US will run the country until a ‘safe, proper and judicious’ transfer of power can take place.
For the latest updates on Trump’s strikes on Venezuela read our live blog.
Trump warned the US is prepared to launch a ‘much bigger’ second wave of attacks on the country – but added he ‘probably’ won’t have to now.
Maduro – who he labelled an ‘illegitimate dictator’ and criminal ‘kingpin’ – will now face ‘the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil’.
Trump told reporters: ‘Late last night and early today, at my direction, the US armed forces launched an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela.
‘Overwhelming American military power – air, land and sea – was used to launch a spectacular assault.
‘It was an assault like people have not seen since World War II.’
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on ‘narco-terrorism’ conspiracy charges.
The Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.
Trump, who was set to speak Saturday morning, posted on his Truth Social account a photo of Maduro blindfolded and in a sweatsuit aboard the ship.
Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital.
The attack lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they’d seen and heard.
Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky.
Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them.
The strike followed a months-long Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs.
Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the US began strikes in September.
As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed at least 115, according to the Trump administration.
Trump said that the US is engaged in an ‘armed conflict’ with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as a necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the US.
Maduro has decried the US. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.
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