In escalating tensions with Venezuela, Trump says US ‘hit’ a coastal drug loading facility

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump has indicated that the United States has “hit” a dock facility along a shore as he wages a pressure campaign on Venezuela, but the U.S. offered few details.

Trump initially seemed to confirm a strike in what appeared to be an impromptu radio interview Friday, and when questioned Monday by reporters about “an explosion in Venezuela,” he said the US struck a facility where boats accused of carrying drugs “load up.”

“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump said as he met in Florida with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“They load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area. There’s where they implement. And that is no longer around.”

It is part of an escalating effort to target what the Trump administration says are boats smuggling drugs bound for the United States.

It moves closer to shore strikes that so far have been carried out by the military in international waters in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

The US military said it conducted another strike on Monday against a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people.

The attacks have killed at least 107 people in 30 strikes since early September, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.

Trump declined to say if the U.S. military or the CIA carried out the strike on the dock or where it occurred.

He did not confirm it happened in Venezuela.

“I know exactly who it was, but I don’t want to say who it was. But you know it was along the shore,” Trump said.

Trump first referenced the strike on Friday, when he called radio host John Catsimatidis during a program on WABC radio and discussed the US strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats.

“I don’t know if you read or saw, they have a big plant or a big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So, we hit them very hard.”

Trump did not offer any additional details in the interview.

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