US president confirms attack on Venezuela and says Nicolás Maduro and wife Cilia Flores have been flown out of country
• US strikes on Venezuela – live updates
The US president, Donald Trump, has said Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been captured and are on their way to New York after a “large scale” pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region. Here is what we know so far:
Donald Trump has confirmed that the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, are heading to New York. Trump told Fox News on Saturday that the couple were taken to a ship after being captured by US forces and were headed to the US city.
The US president added: “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” He has given no details.
Earlier, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said the pair would face criminal charges based on a 2020 New York indictment. Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple will “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts”.
The US is going to be “very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry after the military operation, Trump told Fox News. He said: “We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it.”
The US vice-president, JD Vance, hailed what he called a “truly impressive operation”. Resharing Trump’s post about the action, Vance wrote: “The president offered multiple off-ramps, but was very clear throughout this process: the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States.”
In a statement on X, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Maduro was “under indictment for pushing drugs in the United States”. The Republican senator Mike Lee said on Saturday that Rubio had told him he “anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in US custody”.
Venezuela’s government urged citizens to rise up against the US 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. It accused the US of launching a series of attacks against civilian and military targets, largely focused on the capital, Caracas, before dawn on Saturday.
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.
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/venezuela-attack-what-we-know-so-far-as-trump-claims-maduro-captured
Author : Guardian staff
Publish date : 2026-01-03 17:02:00
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