WASHINGTON, United States (Reuters) – The U.S. attacked Venezuela and deposed its long-serving autocratic President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday, President Donald Trump said, in Washington’s most direct intervention in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama.
“The United States of America has successfully 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,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Ahead of the overnight strikes, the U.S. had accused Maduro of running a “narco-state” and rigging the 2024 election, which the opposition said it won overwhelmingly.
The Venezuelan leader, a 63-year-old former bus driver handpicked by the dying Hugo Chavez to succeed him in 2013, has denied those claims and said Washington was intent on taking control of his nation’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
The U.S. has not made such a direct intervention in its backyard region since the invasion of Panama 37 years ago to depose military leader Manuel Noriega over similar allegations.
Venezuela’s ruling “Chavismo” movement, named for Maduro’s revered predecessor, said civilians and military personnel died in Saturday’s strikes but did not give figures.
Trump said the operation was carried out “in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement,” promising more details at an 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Maduro was captured by a team that included elite U.S. special forces, including the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, a U.S. official told Reuters. Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had told him Maduro would stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.
Rubio “anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in U.S. custody,” Lee wrote on X.
Maduro was indicted in U.S. federal court in 2020 on narco-terrorism and other charges for running what prosecutors called a scheme to send tonnes of cocaine to the U.S. through an alleged “Cartel de Los Soles”. He has always denied that.