During a brief Q&A with reporters while welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach on Monday, President Trump confirmed a Christmas Eve strike on a suspected drug facility on Venezuelan soil.
The comments at Mar-a-Lago–the president’s private residence in Florida–came after President Trump first discussed the occurrence of a strike on Venezuelan territory during a radio interview with New York City grocery chain mogul, John Catsimatidis.
“There was a major explosion”, Trump said on Monday, describing the location as a “dock area where they [Venezuelans] load the boats up with drugs... So we hit all the boats, and now we hit... the implementation area, and that area is no longer around.”
President Trump was referencing a strike that took place on Christmas Eve, with independent reports indicating that the explosion took place in San Francisco, a part of greater Maracaibo in the western state of Zuila, along the Venezuelan coast.
Personal cell phone footage from local residents in the area captured the moment when a large complex consistent with the location in question, suddenly engulfed in secondary fireballs and uncontrollable flames.
When asked how the target was struck, the president did not confirm the means by which the facility was hit or the element of the military responsible for the operation.
The Christmas Eve strike marks the first reported incident where presumed U.S. military assets conducted targeted strikes inside Venezuelan soil.
The strike comes four months after the Pentagon initiated its deployment of military assets to the Caribbean as part of the administration’s effort to reduce the flow of drug trafficking in the region.
Since September, the U.S. military has initiated dozens of strikes on suspected drug vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean waters, killing almost 100 people.
The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which the administration in Washington considers “illegitimate”, has made no comments regarding any strike on the Venezuelan mainland.
