US president said that the US military had launched a large-scale operation in Caracas and that President Nicolas Maduro and his wife had been flown out of the country.
The US attorney general announced charges against them.
United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday, January 3, and said President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington, in a nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack.
Maduro, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform, “has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country.” He set a news conference for later Saturday morning.
Multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas, the capital, around 2:00 am, as Maduro’s government immediately accused the US of attacking civilian and military installations.
Venezuela’s vice president appeared on state TV to say that the government didn’t know where the president and his wife are after US forces captured them. “We do not know the whereabouts of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” Delcy Rodriguez said. “We demand proof of life.” Trump later said in an interview media that Maduro was on board a US ship and being taken to New York.
US-backed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, posted on social media: “The hour of freedom has arrived.” She called for the opposition’s candidate in the 2024 election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, to “immediately” assume the presidency. But the United Nations chief said he was “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected.”
US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a post on X that Maduro and his wife would face “the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts” over drug and terrorism charges.
