![](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/03\/multimedia\/03int-venezuela-explosion-wczl\/03int-venezuela-explosion-wczl-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
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The United States hit Venezuela with a \u201clarge-scale strike\u201d early Saturday and said its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, had been captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure<\/a><\/span> by Washington \u2014 an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack.<\/p>\n Multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas, the capital, as Maduro\u2019s government immediately accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installation. The Venezuelan government called it an \u201cimperialist attack\u201d and urged citizens to take to the streets.<\/p>\n It was not immediately clear who was running the country, and Maduro\u2019s whereabouts were not immediately known. Trump announced the developments on Truth Social shortly after 4:30 a.m. ET. Under Venezuelan law the vice president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, would take power. There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not know the whereabouts of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cWe demand proof of life.\u201d<\/p>\n Maduro, Trump said, \u201chas been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow.\u201d He set a news conference for later Saturday morning.<\/p>\n The legal implications of the strike under U.S. law were not immediately clear. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted on X that he had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who briefed him on the strike. Rubio told Lee that Maduro \u201chas been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House did not immediately respond to queries on where Maduro and his wife were being flown to. Maduro was indicted in March 2020 on \u201cnarco-terrorism\u201d conspiracy charges in the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n Maduro last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.<\/p>\n The explosions in Caracas, Venezuela\u2019s capital, early on the third day of 2026 \u2014 at least seven blasts \u2014 sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report hearing and seeing the explosions. It was not immediately clear if there were casualties on either side. The attack itself lasted less than 30 minutes and it was unclear if more actions lay ahead, though Trump said in his post that the strikes were carried out \u201csuccessfully.\u201d<\/p>\n The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ban on U.S. commercial flights in Venezuelan airspace because of \u201congoing military activity\u201d ahead of the explosions.<\/p>\n The strike came after the Trump administration spent months escalating pressure on Maduro. The CIA was behind a drone strike last week<\/a><\/span> at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels \u2014 the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.<\/p>\n For months, Trump had threatened that he could soon order strikes on targets on Venezuelan land following months of attacks on boats accused of carrying drugs. Maduro has decried the U.S. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Some streets in Caracas fill up<\/strong><\/p>\n Armed individuals and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party. But in other areas of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Parts of the city remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.<\/p>\n Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape sky as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed an urban landscape with cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. Unintelligible conversation could be heard in the background. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.<\/p>\n Smoke could be seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole ground shook. This is horrible. We heard explosions and planes,\u201d said Carmen Hidalgo, a 21-year-old office worker, her voice trembling. She was walking briskly with two relatives, returning from a birthday party. \u201cWe felt like the air was hitting us.\u201d<\/p>\n Venezuela\u2019s government responded to the attack with a call to action. \u201cPeople to the streets!\u201d it said in a statement. \u201cThe Bolivarian Government calls on all social and political forces in the country to activate mobilization plans and repudiate this imperialist attack.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement added that Maduro had \u201cordered all national defense plans to be implemented\u201d and declared \u201ca state of external disturbance.\u201d That state of emergency gives him the power to suspend people\u2019s rights and expand the role of the armed forces.<\/p>\n The website of the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, a post that has been closed since 2019, issued a warning to American citizens in the country, saying it was \u201caware of reports of explosions in and around Caracas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cU.S. citizens in Venezuela should shelter in place,\u201d the warning said.<\/p>\n Reaction emerges slowly<\/strong><\/p>\n Inquiries to the Pentagon and U.S. Southern Command since Trump\u2019s social media post went unanswered. The FAA warned all commercial and private U.S. pilots that the airspace over Venezuela and the small island nation of Curacao, just off the coast of the country to the north, was off limits \u201cdue to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted his potential concerns, reflecting a view from the right flank in the Congress. \u201cI look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force,\u201d Lee said on X.<\/p>\n It was not clear if the U.S. Congress had been officially notified of the strikes.<\/p>\n The Armed Services committees in both houses of Congress, which have jurisdiction over military matters, have not been notified by the administration of any actions, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it.<\/p>\n Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised deep reservations and flat out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling on boats near the Venezuelan coast and the Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.<\/p>\n Regional reaction was not immediately forthcoming in the early hours of Saturday. Cuba, however, a supporter of the Maduro government and a longtime adversary of the United States, called for the international community to respond to what president Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel Berm\u00fadez called \u201cthe criminal attack.\u201d \u201cOur zone of peace is being brutally assaulted,\u201d he said on X. Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes.<\/p>\n President Javier Milei of Argentina praised the claim by his close ally, Trump, that Maduro had been captured with a political slogan he often deploys to celebrate right-wing advances: \u201cLong live freedom, dammit!\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes is 35 and the number of people killed is at least 115, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n They followed a major buildup of American forces<\/a><\/span> in the waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the nation\u2019s most advanced aircraft carrier<\/a><\/span>, which added thousands more troops to what was already the largest military presence in the region in generations.<\/p>\n Trump has justified the boat strikes<\/a><\/span> as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. and asserted that the U.S. is engaged in an \u201carmed conflict\u201d with drug cartels<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n – Regina Garcia Cano and Konstantin Toropin, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The United States hit Venezuela with a \u201clarge-scale strike\u201d early Saturday and said its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, had been captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington \u2014 an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack. Multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/03\/multimedia\/03int-venezuela-explosion-wczl\/03int-venezuela-explosion-wczl-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9607,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9605\/revisions\/9607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n