The CIA struck a remote dock in Venezuela last week, in the first known attack inside the Latin American country shortly after President Trump teased that such strikes would be coming, according to multiple reports.
The spy agency used a drone to strike the dock, believing that it was being used by the notoriously savage Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to smuggle drugs, CNN and the New York Times reported.
No one is believed to have been killed or wounded in the attack.
Trump appeared to publicly hint at the attack last Friday and seemingly confirmed it on Monday.
“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,” the president told John Catsimatidis on his WABC radio show.
“Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
The strike was not public knowledge at the time of the president’s remarks. It was reportedly successful in taking out the facility and its ships, but officials believe that drug traffickers have many more facilities that they use for smuggling.
“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump recalled to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Monday.
“They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”
Venezuela also did not appear to give the strike much attention when it happened, CNN reported.
Since September, the Trump administration has bombed more than 30 alleged drug boats, killing over 107 people — mostly from Venezuela. Those strikes are believed to have been conducted in international waters.
Two weeks ago, the president ordered a blockade of oil tankers entering and exiting Venezuela, which has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Trump also blasted the country as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Trump has been attempting to ramp up pressure on Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, amid his frustrations with migration and drug trafficking from the beleaguered country.
Earlier this month, the president had teased plans to hit targets inside Venezuela, but until now, his administration had not been known to have done so.
“We’re going to start doing those strikes on land, too,” Trump said earlier this month.
“The land is much easier… We know the routes they take. We know where the bad ones live.”
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that part of Trump’s objective is to make Maduro “cry uncle.”
But Maduro, whose election victory last year has been met with international skepticism, has shown no signs of stepping aside.
Top Trump administration officials have likened the attacks against alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers to past US attacks against Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
The Post contacted the CIA and White House for comment.
