DONALD Trump has said the US hit a ‘big facility’ in Venezuela last week, in what would be the President’s first direct strike in the territory.
In a radio interview Trump said the move came as part of America’s campaign against the Latin American country and its dictator, but gave no further details.
“We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from”, Trump told John Catsimatidis on Friday, the major Republican donor whose radio show airs on WABC.
He added: “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
The shock claim was made during a discussion about the American president’s ongoing campaign against Venezuela and its authoritarian president Nicolas Maduro.
Military officials said they had no information to share and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment, the New York Times reports.
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The Venezuelan government has not reported the attack.
It remains unclear what plant or facility the president was referring to or where it is located.
One US official said Trump was describing a drug facility but refused to add any detail, CNN reports.
The alleged strike would be America’s first official attack on Venezuelan land after weeks of threats.
US officials previously said targets could include drug production facilities or known trafficking routes.
Trump’s latest power play comes as Washington and Caracas teeter on the brink of all-out war.
The weeks earlier, America sensationally seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s shores.
The maritime sting hit a tanker reportedly holding 1.1million barrels of oil.
This was the first time the US interrupted Venezuela’s oil flow and the first target not directly related to the drugs trade.
Earlier this month Trump ramped up threats of military action against Venezuela, vowing to “start with ground attacks”.
The threat came as the White House faced mounting allegations that a deadly September 2 strike on a suspected drug-running boat amounted to a war crime.
The attack hit a vessel off the Venezuelan coast, then followed up with a second strike that killed the survivors.
Claiming Venezuelan traffickers “killed 200,000 Americans last year”, Trump fumed: “We’ll start with ground attacks. It’ll be much easier that way… to take out those sons of bitches.”
Trump has since authorized covert CIA operations inside Venezuela.
Since September, US military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific have killed at least 105 people so far.
The operations have been slammed as extrajudicial killings by critics who say American military has no legal basis for strikes on civilians.
But the US has maintained it is in a conflict with what it calls narco-terrorists who can only be stopped by force.
Along with strikes, Trump announced a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela.
The move aims to cut off a vital source of income for the Maduro government.