Dec. 29 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Monday confirmed that the United States struck a “dock area” that officials believe is used to transfer drugs to boats for international distribution.
The U.S. military has struck dozens of ships in the Caribbean near Venezuela, as well as in the Pacific, that are allegedly shipping drugs from South America to the United States and other countries, but the dock would be the first time that an onshore target has been struck.
Trump said Friday in a radio interview that a “big facility” had been “knocked out” in Venezuela that was not widely publicized until Monday when reporters at Mar-a-Lago asked him about it, ABC News and The New York Times reported.
According to CNN, the dock was targeted by the CIA in a drone strike based on intelligence from the U.S. Special Forces that it was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a shipping facility for drugs.
A spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command told CNN that “Special Operations did not support this operation to include intel support,” the network noted, adding that the Special Operations Forces continue to be involved in Venezuela.
Despite officials offering few details about the strike, Trump, on Monday, appeared to confirm that U.S. forces struck a dock in Venezuela and why it was targeted.
“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load up the boats with drugs,” Trump told reporters. “They load the boats up with drugs. 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.”
The U.S. military for months has built up a military presence in the Caribbean in international waters offshore of Venezuela, culminating in the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and its carrier strike group in November.
A month before that, in mid-October, Trump told reporters that he had authorized the CIA to conduct operations in Venezuela, and noted that they had been doing so for months at that point.
He said at the time that the military had been striking ships because “a lot of Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you see it,” but that the United States would “stop them by land, also” — acknowledging that the administration was considering strikes inside Venezuela.
The Ford’s presence, in addition to more than a dozen other warships, has built up a 15,000 troop presence in the Caribbean that the Pentagon has dubbed Operation Southern Spear.
In addition to striking alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, Trump also has ordered a naval blockade to prevent Venezuela from shipping its sanctioned oil to Iran and China.
The administration so far has apprehended three oil tankers leaving Venezuela.
Trump has said he is aiming to depose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro based on accusations that Maduro runs the Tren de Aragua gang, has emptied the country’s prisons and sent criminals to the United States to wreak havoc in the country, and is pumping drugs into the United States.
