Trump says US hit drug dock in Venezuela;

Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made it clear that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not part of any mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions against Venezuela and is di­rect­ing all ques­tions about what ap­pears to be the Unit­ed States’ first strike on Venezue­lan soil to the US Em­bassy.

“Any ques­tions re­gard­ing this are best di­rect­ed to the US Em­bassy. Trinidad and To­ba­go is NOT a par­tic­i­pant in any mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions with­in Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp yes­ter­day.

She was re­spond­ing to ques­tions re­lat­ed to in­ter­na­tion­al news re­ports yes­ter­day, which quot­ed US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump as say­ing the US had “hit” a dock fa­cil­i­ty along a shore in Venezuela, as he con­tin­ued to wage his pres­sure cam­paign against the Nicolás Maduro regime.

Trump ini­tial­ly seemed to con­firm a strike in what ap­peared to be an im­promp­tu ra­dio in­ter­view last Fri­day, and when ques­tioned by re­porters yes­ter­day about “an ex­plo­sion in Venezuela”, he con­firmed the strike.

“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.”

If Pres­i­dent Trump’s state­ment is cor­rect, it would be the first strike on Venezue­lan soil af­ter months of strikes in Caribbean wa­ters, where boats al­leged­ly car­ry­ing drugs were hit.

The US mil­i­tary al­so said yes­ter­day that it had con­duct­ed an­oth­er strike against a boat ac­cused of smug­gling drugs in the east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean, killing two peo­ple. The at­tacks have killed at least 107 peo­ple in 30 strikes since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, ac­cord­ing to num­bers an­nounced by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

While the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment had not of­fi­cial­ly re­act­ed to Pres­i­dent Trump’s claims of a strike on land up to last evening, Venezue­lan news me­dia re­port­ed on it.

Ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per El Na­cional, Pres­i­dent Trump al­so said yes­ter­day that he had spo­ken “very re­cent­ly” with Pres­i­dent Maduro, but that the con­ver­sa­tion was not fruit­ful.

On Christ­mas Eve, there was al­so an ex­plo­sion at a chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion plant in the Venezue­lan city of Mara­cai­bo, which set off ru­mours on so­cial me­dia that the plant was hit by the US mil­i­tary.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny, Pri­ma­zol, is­sued a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day, where the com­pa­ny re­vealed the in­ci­dent was un­re­lat­ed to a US strike and was brought un­der con­trol with­out any in­juries.

“Clean-up and as­sess­ment ef­forts are cur­rent­ly un­der­way in co­or­di­na­tion with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties,” the state­ment em­pha­sised.

Pri­ma­zol re­ject­ed the dif­fer­ent ver­sions cir­cu­lat­ing via so­cial me­dia, which they lament­ed on­ly seek to dam­age the rep­u­ta­tion of the busi­ness en­ti­ty.

Al­so yes­ter­day, Venezue­lan Gen­er­al Domin­go Hernán­dez Lárez, Strate­gic Op­er­a­tional Com­man­der, re­port­ed on his so­cial me­dia ac­counts the de­struc­tion of eight air­craft and the dis­man­tling of four lo­gis­ti­cal camps be­long­ing to drug traf­fick­ing groups in Ama­zonas state.

The op­er­a­tion took place in the Al­to Orinoco mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, a bor­der area with the Re­pub­lic of Brazil. It was car­ried out un­der the di­rect in­struc­tions of Maduro as part of a frontal of­fen­sive against the traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics and psy­chotrop­ic sub­stances through­out the na­tion.

The Venezue­lan mil­i­tary of­fi­cer said Venezuela had record­ed a to­tal of 39 air­craft ren­dered un­us­able so far in 2025 and 430 since 2012, con­sol­i­dat­ing an in­sur­mount­able bar­ri­er against or­gan­ised crime.