US drone strikes port off Venezuela coast

The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The drone strike, the details of which have not been previously reported, 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. No one was present at the facility at the time it was struck, so there were no casualties, according to the sources.

One of the sources said the strike was successful in that it destroyed the facility and its boats, but described it as largely symbolic since it is just one of many port facilities used by drug traffickers leaving Venezuela.

This strike is the first known case of a US attack on a target inside the country, the publication notes.

Trump did not directly confirm the attack, but in an interview on Dec. 26, he acknowledged that the US had destroyed a “big facility where ships come from.”

The CIA declined to comment.