At least seven explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard around 2 a.m. local time Saturday in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.
It was not immediately clear what was behind the explosions. Venezuela’s government, the Pentagon and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
People in various neighborhoods rushed to the streets. Some could be seen in the distance from various areas of Caracas.
This comes as the US military has been targeting, in recent days, alleged drug-smuggling boats.
On Friday, Venezuela said it was open to negotiating an agreement with the United States to combat drug trafficking.
The South American country’s President Nicolás Maduro also said in a pretaped interview aired Thursday that the US wants to force a government change in Venezuela and gain access to its vast oil reserves through the monthslong pressure campaign that began with a massive military deployment to the Caribbean Sea in August.
Maduro has been charged with narco-terrorism in the US.
The CIA was behind a drone strike last week at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels in what was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the US began strikes on boats in September.
US President Donald Trump for months had threatened that he could soon order strikes on targets on Venezuelan land. The US has also seized sanctioned oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, and Trump ordered a blockade of others in a move that seemed designed to put a tighter chokehold on the South American country’s economy.
The US military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes is 35 and the number of people killed is at least 115, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.
They followed a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier, which added thousands more troops to what was already the largest military presence in the region in generations.
Trump has justified the boat strikes as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and asserted that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported on the explosions in Caracas on Saturday, showing images of the Venezuelan capital. Iran has been close to Venezuela for years, in part due to their shared enmity of the US
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