President Donald Trump said the U.S. “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela” and said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were “captured and flown out of the Country.”
The announcement on Trump’s social media platform came shortly before 4:30 a.m. Saturday a few hours after several explosions were heard in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas, witnesses said, and photos and videos showed plumes of smoke and a large fireball in the night sky.
Trump said the operation was carried out in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement and said he would hold a news conference at 11 a.m. from Mar-a-Lago.
In a brief phone interview with The New York Times, President Trump celebrated the success of the mission to capture Maduro.
“A lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people,” Trump told The New York Times. “It was a brilliant operation, actually.”
When asked whether he had sought congressional authorization for the operation or what would come next for Venezuela, Trump said he would address those matters during his news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday morning.
The latest events come amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela including a build-up of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean and the targeting of alleged drug-smuggling boats.
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued an alert prohibiting U.S. civil aircraft from flying over Venezuela “due to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity,” according to the FAA.
