Venezuelan officials who visited the site of the U.S. attack against alleged cartel infrastructure earlier this month reportedly acknowledged Washington was behind it, even as authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro refrains to address the episode in public.
A Venezuelan indigenous person who witnessed the attack told NBC News that the morning after government officials showed up to the area. “The gringos did this,” one of the representatives said, according to the woman.
Maduro, however, again refrained to address the incident. During a recent appearance in Maracay, Aragua, he resorted to his usual calls in English: “Victory forever, forever, forever. Not crazy war. Yes peace forever,” Maduro said before the applauding crowd.
He then proceeded to dance along with people next to him to a remix of a speech including those phrases. “I can’t speak because the DJ plays the music. That music is for nightclubs. It’s the number one song of the Venezuelan season. They haven’t been able to take it down from the Billboard list,” Maduro claimed.
The attack in question hit what has been described as a remote dock in the Venezuelan coast believed to be used by the Tren de Aragua gang to load drugs onto vessels that would then journey through the Caribbean.
CNN cited sources with knowledge of the attack who said no one was present at the facility and there were no casualties. It added that Special Operations Forces provided intelligence support, but a spokesperson for the US Special Operations Command, Col. Allie Weiskopf, said that was not the case.
Trump acknowledged the strike on Monday but refused to disclose who was behind it. Speaking to press along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday, Trump was asked whether the U.S. military or the CIA had conducted the attack. “Well, I don’t want to say that. I know exactly who it was, but I don’t want who it was. It was along the shore,” Trump said.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro also addressed the strike, acknowledging the facility produced cocaine, saying guerrilla group ELN is behind the operation.
In a lengthy social media post, Petro said he knows “Trump bombed a factory, in Maracaibo, where coca paste is mixed to turn it into cocaine and take advantage of Maracaibo’s location.”
Originally published on Latin Times
