President Donald Trump said on Monday that the US has bombed a docking area for boats claimed to be carrying drugs from Venezuela, in what appears to be the first land strike against Caracas.
The attack follows weeks of air strikes against speedboats the administration claims are being used by traffickers, and after a massive build-up of US military in the Caribbean, aimed at pressuring Venezuela's leftist President Nicolas Maduro.
“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Mr Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, as he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“So we hit all the boats and now we hit the area. It's the implementation area, that's where they implement. And that is no longer around.”
He would not say if it was a military or CIA operation, or where the strike occurred, saying only that it was “along the shore".
Mr Trump said he and Mr Maduro had talked by phone “pretty recently” but that “nothing much comes out of it". The two also spoke by phone in November.
Mr Trump had been asked to elaborate on comments he made in a radio interview on Friday that seemed to mention a land strike for the first time.
“They have a big plant or a big facility where they send, you know, where the ships come from,” he told billionaire supporter John Catsimatidis on WABC in New York. “Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
Mr Trump did not say in the interview where the facility was or give any other details. There has been no official comment from the Venezuelan government.
He has been threatening for weeks that ground strikes on drug cartels in the region would start “soon”. US forces have carried out strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing more than 100 people.
Rights groups say the strikes could amount to extrajudicial killings, a charge that Washington denies.
