United States President Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that his country\u2019s forces had bombed Venezuela and captured the South American nation\u2019s president, Nicolas Maduro, and First Lady Cilia Flores in a dramatic overnight military attack that followed months of rising tensions.<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s government said that the US had struck three states apart from the capital, Caracas, while neighbouring Colombia\u2019s President Gustavo Petro released a longer list of places that he said had been hit.<\/p>\n
The operation has few, if any, parallels in modern history. The US has previously captured foreign leaders, including Iraq\u2019s Saddam Hussein and Panama\u2019s Manuel Noriega, but after invading those countries in declared wars.<\/p>\n
Here is what we know about the US attacks and the lead-up to this escalation:<\/p>\n At least seven explosions were reported from Caracas, a city of more than three million people, at about 2am local time (06:00 GMT), as residents said they heard low-flying aircraft. Lucia Newman, Al Jazeera\u2019s Latin America editor, reported that at least one of the explosions appeared to come from near Fort Tiuna, the main military base in the Venezuelan capital.<\/p>\n Earlier, the US Federal Aviation Administration had issued instructions to American commercial airlines to stay clear of Venezuelan airspace.<\/p>\n Within minutes of the explosions, Maduro declared a state of emergency, as his government named the US as responsible for the attacks, saying that it had struck Caracas as well as the neighbouring states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira.<\/p>\n The US embassy in Bogota, Colombia, referred to the reports of the explosions and asked American citizens to stay out of Venezuela, in a statement. But the diplomatic mission did not confirm US involvement in the attacks. That came more than three hours after the bombings, from Trump.<\/p>\n In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said, a little after 09:00 GMT that the US had \u201csuccessfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country\u201d.<\/p>\n Venezuela has not yet confirmed that Maduro was taken by US troops \u2013 but it also has not denied the claim.<\/p>\n Trump said that the attack had been carried out in conjunction with US law enforcement, but did not specify who led the operation.<\/p>\n Trump announced that there would be a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida at 11am local time (16:00 GMT) on Friday, where more details would be revealed.<\/p>\n While neither the US nor Venezuelan authorities have pinpointed locations that were struck, Colombia\u2019s Petro, in a social media post, listed a series of places in Venezuela that he said had been hit.<\/p>\n They include:<\/p>\n Trump has, in recent months, accused Maduro of driving narcotics smuggling into the US, and has claimed that the Venezuelan president is behind the Tren de Aragua gang that Washington has proscribed as a foreign terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n But his own intelligence agencies have said that there is no evidence that Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua, and US data shows that Venezuela is not a major source of contraband narcotics entering the country.<\/p>\n Starting in September, the US military launched a series of strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea that it claimed were carrying narcotics. More than 100 people have been killed in at least 30 such boat bombings, but the Trump administration is yet to present any public evidence that there were drugs on board, that the vessels were travelling to the US, or that the people on the boats belonged to banned organisations, as the US has claimed.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the US began its largest military deployment in the Caribbean Sea in at least several decades, spearheaded by the USS Gerald Ford, the world\u2019s largest aircraft carrier.<\/p>\n In December, the US hijacked two ships carrying Venezuelan oil, and has since imposed sanctions on multiple companies and their tankers, accusing them of trying to circumvent already stringent American sanctions against Venezuela\u2019s oil industry.<\/p>\n Then, last week, the US struck what Trump described as a \u201cdock\u201d in Venezuela where he claimed drugs were loaded onto boats.<\/p>\n Trump has so far framed his pressure and military action against Venezuela and in the Caribbean Sea as driven by a desire to stop the flow of dangerous drugs into the US.<\/p>\n But he has increasingly also sought Maduro\u2019s departure from power, despite a phone call in early December that the Venezuelan president described as \u201ccordial\u201d.<\/p>\n And in recent weeks, some senior aides of the US president have been more open about Venezuela\u2019s oil: the country\u2019s vast reserves of crude, unmatched in the world, amounted to an estimated 303 billion barrels (Bbbl) as of 2023.<\/p>\n Later on Saturday, Trump told Fox News that the US is going to be\u00a0\u201cstrongly involved\u201d in Venezuela\u2019s oil industry moving forward\u201d.<\/p>\n On December 17, Trump\u2019s top adviser Stephen Miller claimed that the US had \u201ccreated the oil industry in Venezuela\u201d and that the South American country\u2019s oil should therefore belong to the US.<\/p>\n But though US companies were the earliest to drill for oil in Venezuela in the early 1900s, international law is clear: sovereign states \u2013 in this case Venezuela \u2013 own the natural resources within their territories under the principle of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources (PSNR).<\/p>\n Venezuela nationalised its oil industry in 1976. Since 1999, when socialist President Hugo Chavez, Maduro\u2019s mentor and predecessor, came to power, Venezuela has been locked in a tense relationship with the US.<\/p>\n Still,\u00a0one major US oil company, Chevron, continues to operate in the country.<\/p>\n The Venezuelan opposition, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado, has publicly called for the US to intervene against Maduro, and has pointed to the oil reserves that American firms could tap more easily with a new dispensation in power in Caracas.<\/p>\n Oil has long been Venezuela\u2019s biggest export, but US sanctions since 2008 have crippled formal sales and the country today earns only a fraction of what it once did.<\/p>\n While Venezuela has not confirmed Maduro\u2019s capture, Vice President Delcy Rodrigues told state-owned VTV that the government had lost contact with Maduro and First Lady Flores and did not have clarity on their whereabouts.<\/p>\n She demanded that the US provide \u201cproof of life\u201d of Maduro and Flores, and added that Venezuela\u2019s defences were activated.<\/p>\n Earlier, in a statement, the Venezuelan government said that it \u201crejects, repudiates and denounces\u201d the attacks.<\/p>\n It said that the aggression threatens the stability of Latin America and the Caribbean, and places the lives of millions of people at risk. It accused the US of trying to impose a colonial war, and force a regime change \u2013 and said that these attempts would fail.<\/p>\n In a statement posted on X, Trump\u2019s Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Maduro and his wife have been indicted in the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n Maduro has been charged with \u201cNarco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy\u201d among other charges, Bondi said. It was unclear if his wife is facing the same charges, but she referred to the Maduro couple as \u201calleged international narco traffickers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, earlier posted on X that he had spoken to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had told him that Maduro had been \u201carrested by US personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States, and that the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020, US prosecutors had charged Maduro with running a cocaine-trafficking network.<\/p>\n But US officials remain silent on the illegality of Maduro\u2019s capture and the attacks on Venezuela, which violate UN charter principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations.<\/p>\n Russia and Cuba, close Maduro allies, condemned the attack. Colombia, which neighbours Venezuela and has itself been in Trump\u2019s crosshairs, said that it \u201crejects the aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and of Latin America\u201d \u2013 even though Bogota itself does not recognise Maduro\u2019s government.<\/p>\n Most other nations have been relatively muted in their response to the US aggression so far.<\/p>\n Constitutionally, Rodriguez, the vice president, is next in line to take charge if Maduro indeed has been plucked out of Venezuela by the US.<\/p>\n Other senior leaders seen as close to Maduro and influential within the Venezuelan hierarchy include Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, National Assembly President \u2013 and Delcy\u2019s brother \u2013 Jorge Rodriguez, and military chief General Vladimir Padrino L\u00f3pez.<\/p>\n But it is unclear whether the state apparatus that Chavez and Maduro carefully built over a quarter century will last without them.<\/p>\n \u201cMaduro\u2019s capture is a devastating moral blow for the political movement started by Hugo Chavez in 1999, which has devolved into a dictatorship since Nicolas Maduro took power,\u201d Carlos Pina, a Venezuelan analyst based in Mexico, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n If the US does engineer \u2013 or has already engineered \u2013 a regime change, the opposition\u2019s Machado could be a front-line candidate to take Venezuela\u2019s top job, though it is unclear how popular that might be. In a November poll in Venezuela, 55 percent of participants were opposed to military intervention in their country, and an equal number were opposed to economic sanctions against Venezuela.<\/p>\n In a post on X on Saturday, Machado said her opposition colleague, Edmundo Gonzalez, who many claim won the last election against Maduro, should now assume the presidency. She added that the opposition would restore order and free all political prisoners.<\/p>\n But Trump might be mistaken if he thinks the US can stay out of the chaos that\u2019s likely to follow in a post-Maduro Venezuela, suggests Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America, the US and North America programme at Chatham House.<\/p>\n \u201cAssuming even if there is regime change \u2013 of some sort, and it\u2019s by no means clear even if it does happen that it will be democratic \u2013 the US\u2019s military action will likely require sustained US engagement of some sort,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWill the Trump White House have the stomach for that?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n United States President Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that his country\u2019s forces had bombed Venezuela and captured the South American nation\u2019s president, Nicolas Maduro, and First Lady Cilia Flores in a dramatic overnight military attack that followed months of rising tensions. Venezuela\u2019s government said that the US had struck three states apart from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Pedestrians](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/AP26003226353978-1767443451.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
How did the attack unfold?<\/h2>\n
![\"Supporters](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/AP26003415366775-1767443520.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
What did Trump say?<\/h2>\n
![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/INTERACTIVE-US-attacks-on-Venezuela-map-1767437429.png?quality=80\")
<\/p>\nWhere did the US attack in Venezuela?<\/h2>\n
\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-11-16T214231Z_848259457_RC2VVHAJ8HVY_RTRMADP_3_USA-VENEZUELA-MILITARY-1767228901.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
What led to these US attacks on Venezuela?<\/h2>\n
![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/INTERACTIVE-Crude-oil-reserves-vs-exports-1756989578.png?quality=80\")
<\/p>\nCould all this be about oil?<\/h2>\n
![\"Venezuelan](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/AP25223734718647-1767444130.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
How has Venezuela\u2019s government reacted?<\/h2>\n
![\"(COMBO)](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AFP__20250808__692V79U__v1__HighRes__ComboUsVenezuelaPoliticsTrumpMaduro-1762158474.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578&quality=80\")
What happens to Maduro next?<\/h2>\n
![\"Venezuela's](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/AP25134041174208-1767444006.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
What\u2019s next for Venezuela?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"