Trump: USA Captured Venezuelan President In Its Capital And Flew Him Out

Trump describes US attack on Venezuela as a ‘brilliant operation’

Speaking to the New York Times (NYT) via a short telephone interview today about the US attack on Venezuela and the mission to capture its president, Donald Trump celebrated what he described as a “brilliant operation”.

According to the publication, Trump said:

A lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people.

It was a brilliant operation, actually.

Asked if he had sought congressional authority for the operation and what is next for the South American country, the US president told the NYT that he would address those questions during his press conference at Mar-a-Lago.

In a defiant video that was posted online, Venezuela’s defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López, accused the US of launching a “deplorable” and “criminal” regime change operation and said the “barbaric” invading forces had “desecrated our sacred land”.

“This invasion represents the greatest outrage the country has ever suffered,” Gen Padrino López declared, adding that Venezuelan authorities were still trying to calculate how many civilians had been killed or injured during helicopter attacks in urban areas.

Venezuela’s defence chief called on citizens and soldiers to unite to resist the foreign “invasion”. He said:

They have attacked us but they will not vanquish us … we will form an indestructible wall of resistance. Our vocation is peace, but our heritage is the fight for freedom.

What we know so far
If you are coming to the blog now or are after the latest updates in one handy post, here is a summary of everything we know so far about the US attack on Venezuela:

Donald Trump has claimed the US has “captured” Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them out of the South American country after a pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region.

Venezuela’s government accused the US of launching a series of attacks against civilian and military targets in the South American country, after explosions rocked its capital, Caracas, before dawn on Saturday.

In a statement, Venezuela’s government urged citizens to rise up against the assault and said Washington risked plunging Latin America into chaos with “an extremely serious” act of “military aggression”. “The entire country must mobilise to defeat this imperialist aggression,” it added.

Explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas in the early hours of Saturday. In its statement, Venezuela’s government confirmed that the city had come under attack, as well as three other states: Miranda, La Guaira and Aragua.

Venezuela has accused the US of trying to “seize control” of country’s resources, in particular its oil and minerals. Th country has called on the international community to denounce what it called a flagrant violation of international law that put millions of lives at risk.

In the early hours of Saturday the president of neighbouring Colombia, Gustavo Petro, called for an immediate emergency session of the UN security council, saying on social media that Venezuela had come under attack.

Iran on Saturday condemned Saturday’s attacks on Venezuela, after Caracas accused the United States of being behind explosions that rocked the capital.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Iranian foreign ministry in a statement said it “strongly condemns the American military attack on Venezuela and the flagrant violation of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country”.

Iran’s statement was put out before Donald Trump’s Truth Social post confirming that the US had conducted “a large scale strike” on Venezuela (see 9.31am GMT).