Trump says the US ‘hit’ a facility along shore where he says alleged drug boats ‘load up’

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has in­di­cat­ed that the U.S. has “hit” a dock fa­cil­i­ty along a shore as he wages a pres­sure cam­paign on Venezuela, but the U.S. of­fered few de­tails.

Trump ini­tial­ly seemed to con­firm a strike in what ap­peared to be an im­promp­tu ra­dio in­ter­view Fri­day, and when ques­tioned Mon­day by re­porters about “an ex­plo­sion in Venezuela,” he said the U.S. struck a fa­cil­i­ty where boats ac­cused of car­ry­ing drugs “load up.”

“There was a ma­jor ex­plo­sion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump said as he met in Flori­da with Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu. “They load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats and now we hit the area. It’s the im­ple­men­ta­tion area. There’s where they im­ple­ment. And that is no longer around.”

It is part of an es­ca­lat­ing ef­fort to tar­get what the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion says are boats smug­gling drugs bound for the Unit­ed States. It moves clos­er to shore strikes that so far have been car­ried out by the mil­i­tary in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean.

Trump de­clined to say if the U.S. mil­i­tary or the CIA car­ried out the lat­est strike or where it oc­curred. He did not con­firm it hap­pened in Venezuela.

“I know ex­act­ly who it was, but I don’t want to say who it was. But you know it was along the shore,” Trump said.

Trump first ref­er­enced the strike on Fri­day, when he called ra­dio host John Cat­si­ma­tidis dur­ing a pro­gram on WABC ra­dio and dis­cussed the U.S. strikes on al­leged drug-car­ry­ing boats. The at­tacks have killed at least 105 peo­ple in 29 known strikes since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

“I don’t know if you read or saw, they have a big plant or a big fa­cil­i­ty where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So, we hit them very hard.”

Trump did not of­fer any ad­di­tion­al de­tails in the in­ter­view.

De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth or one of the U.S. mil­i­tary’s so­cial me­dia ac­counts has in the past typ­i­cal­ly an­nounced every boat strike in a post on X, but there has been no post of any strike on a fa­cil­i­ty.

The Pen­ta­gon on Mon­day re­ferred ques­tions to the White House, which did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a mes­sage seek­ing more de­tails. The press of­fice of Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment on Trump’s state­ment.

Trump for months has sug­gest­ed he may con­duct land strikes in South Amer­i­ca, in Venezuela or pos­si­bly an­oth­er coun­try, and in re­cent weeks has been say­ing the U.S. would move be­yond strik­ing boats and would strike on land “soon.”

In Oc­to­ber, Trump con­firmed he had au­tho­rized the CIA to con­duct covert op­er­a­tions in Venezuela. The agency did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a mes­sage seek­ing com­ment Mon­day.

Along with the strikes, the U.S. has sent war­ships, built up mil­i­tary forces in the re­gion, seized two oil tankers and pur­sued a third.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has said it is in “armed con­flict” with drug car­tels and seek­ing to stop the flow of nar­cotics in­to the Unit­ed States.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro has in­sist­ed the re­al pur­pose of the U.S. mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions is to force him from pow­er.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an in­ter­view with Van­i­ty Fair pub­lished this month that Trump “wants to keep on blow­ing boats up un­til Maduro ‘cries un­cle.’”