DREAM / The Prime Minister resigns and wakes up under the Parisian bridge!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

CIA uses drones to attack drug cartels in Venezuela

2025-12-30 08:54:36Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

CIA uses drones to attack drug cartels in Venezuela

The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, marking the first known U.S. strike on a target inside the Latin American country.

The drone strike, details of which have not been previously reported, targeted a remote pier on the Venezuelan coast that the U.S. government believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store drugs and transport them to ships for onward transportation, the sources said. No one was present at the facility at the time of the strike, so there were no casualties, the sources said.

Two sources said U.S. Special Operations Forces provided intelligence support for the operation, underscoring their ongoing involvement in the region. But Colonel Allie Weiskopf, a spokeswoman for U.S. Special Operations Command, denied this, saying: “Special Operations did not support this operation to include intelligence support.”

President Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge the attack for the first time in an interview last week that initially drew little attention, though he offered few specifics, including when reporters asked him directly about it on Monday.

The attack could significantly escalate tensions between the US and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the US has pressured to resign through an aggressive military campaign.

The US has launched strikes that have destroyed more than 30 ships in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean in what it has described as a counternarcotics campaign, and Trump has ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers coming in and out of Venezuela. Trump has also repeatedly threatened to carry out strikes inside Venezuela, but until the CIA raid earlier this month, the only known US strikes on Venezuelan targets were against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in international waters.

Trump acknowledged in an interview on December 26 that the US had taken down some kind of “large structure where the ships come from” while talking about his administration’s campaign against Venezuela. Asked again about it on Monday, he said the US had struck “in the area of ​​the port where they load the drug ships.” But he declined to comment when asked whether the attack was carried out by the military or the CIA.

"So we hit all the ships and now we hit the zone. It's the enforcement zone, that's where they enforce and this is no longer there," the president said.

One of the sources said the attack was successful in destroying the facility and its ships, but described it as largely symbolic as it is just one of many port facilities used by drug traffickers fleeing Venezuela. It also appeared to attract little or no attention, even domestically, in real time.

Trump earlier this year expanded the CIA's authority to conduct operations in Latin America, including inside Venezuela. But even then, the U.S. military had the legal authority to conduct strikes against suspected traffickers only at sea, not on land, as CNN has reported.

The Trump administration has offered various justifications for the campaign in Venezuela, which has included a massive buildup of military assets in the Caribbean. Officials have pointed to a counternarcotics imperative, but Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair in an interview that the naval strikes were intended to make Maduro “cry.” The Venezuelan leader has shown no signs of relinquishing power.

Senior officials have made it clear publicly and in briefings to lawmakers that they intend to continue targeting suspected drug traffickers using a manual similar to that used to kill terrorists during the global war on terror, a campaign in which the CIA also played a crucial role. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has openly compared drug traffickers to al-Qaeda.

“These narco-terrorists are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere,” the secretary said at the Reagan National Defense Forum earlier this month. “We are hitting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hit al-Qaeda,” he said.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×