The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, CNN reported on Monday.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the news network said it marked the first known US attack on a target inside that country.
The drone strike targeted a remote dock on the Venezuelan coast that the US government believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store drugs and move them onto boats for onward shipping, the sources said, according to the report.
They added that there was no one at the facility at the time it was struck, so there were no casualties.
US Special Operations Forces provided intelligence support to the operation, the sources noted.
Last week, President Donald Trump said the US recently carried out strikes on “a big plant or a big facility...where the ships come from," though he did not specify the location or target.
“We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” he said.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, when he was asked for more details, Trump said “there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs” and that an “implementation area” was “no longer around.”
He did not specify which US agency carried out the attack, saying only that he knew who was responsible but did not want to disclose it.
Asked whether he had spoken recently with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Trump said he had spoken with him “pretty recently” but added that “nothing much” came of it.
The remarks come as the US has intensified military operations in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September, citing efforts against narcotics trafficking.
The campaign coincides with broader US pressure on Venezuela, including oil tanker blockades, vessel seizures and a heightened military presence near Venezuelan waters. Venezuela has condemned the actions as “international piracy.”
