Colombian President Gustavo Petro said yesterday that the US bombed a laboratory where cocaine in the port city of Maracaibo, in western Venezuela.
“We know that Trump bombed a factory in Maracaibo, we fear that coca paste is being mixed there to produce cocaine,” Petro said via X.
U.S. President Donald Trump has in recent days spoken of the first U.S. ground strike in Venezuela, but without specifying exactly where it took place.
In a lengthy text, Socialist President Petro assessed that it was a deployment of the National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian rebel group that partly controls the cocaine-producing Katatubo prefecture, which neighbors Venezuela and is near Maracaibo.
“It’s just the ELN. With its trafficking and dogmatism, the ELN is enabling the invasion of Venezuela,” the Colombian president wrote.
Donald Trump told reporters that the U.S. strike took place on a “beach” in “an area where there was a waterfront where boats were being loaded with drugs.”
The Venezuelan government has made no official comment.
The US has been putting a lot of pressure on Caracas for months, accusing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of heading a major drug trafficking ring. Maduro rejects the accusation.
Since early September, the US armed forces have launched some thirty aerial bombings against boats that Washington says were carrying drugs, killing at least 107 people in the Caribbean and Pacific.
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