Colombian president confirms US targeted cocaine factory in Venezuela

Colombian President Gustavo Petro confirmed that the United States bombed a cocaine factory in the port of Maracaibo, in western Venezuela.

“We know that Trump bombed a factory in Maracaibo, and we are afraid that they are mixing coca paste there to make cocaine,” Petro wrote on X after President Donald Trump announced the first US ground strike on the Venezuelan coast without specifying its location.

In his lengthy post on X, Petro explained that the site targeted was a facility of the Army National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian rebel group that partially controls the cocaine-producing region of Catatumbo, located on the border with Venezuela near Maracaibo.

“It’s simply the ELN… By inciting and radicalizing, it enables the invasion of Venezuela”.

Announcing the US strike, Trump said on Monday: “There was a big explosion in the marina area where they are carrying boats with drugs… We targeted all the boats, then we targeted the site itself and it doesn’t exist anymore”.

The United States has been exerting intense pressure on Caracas for months, accusing President Nicolas Maduro of leading a vast drug trafficking network.

Since September, US forces have carried out nearly 30 strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific against boats suspected of drug trafficking, killing some 107 people.

The United States has so far provided no evidence that the targeted boats were transporting drugs.

Washington has deployed major military reinforcements to the Caribbean.

Caracas argues that the Trump administration is resorting to false accusations of drug trafficking in a bid to topple Maduro and control the country’s vast oil resources.