As they were jolted from their beds just before 2am on Saturday, many Caracas residents sought an innocent explanation for the racket that had interrupted their sleep: an exploding air conditioning unit, a tropical thunderstorm, an earthquake. Or perhaps a festive display of pyrotechnics over Venezuela’s mountain-flanked capital.
“I thought it might be fireworks,” Carlos Hurtado, a resident of the 23 de Enero housing estate on the city’s westside, recalled of the moment he was woken by a mysterious sequence of rumblings and explosions.
But as plumes of smoke rose over the country’s largest city, air raid sirens rang out, and WhatsApp groups lit up with shaky cellphone videos of tangerine-coloured explosions, it became clear that the pre-dawn detonations were not the result of a natural disaster or defective appliance.
After five months of intensifying US military pressure, Venezuela was under attack, with missiles raining down on army bases, airfields and key infrastructure across the capital and the surrounding region.
“They are bombing La Carlota and they’re bombing Fuerte Tiuna,” one resident of a middle-class area called Sebucán warned neighbours in a six-second voice message, referring to two of the city’s most important military installations. La Carlota is an airbase in the heart of Caracas; Fuerte Tiuna is a heavily fortified military complex, long believed to have been the home of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
Video footage captured by a group of hikers who were reportedly camping on the mountains overlooking Caracas was reminiscent of images of the“shock and awe” air campaign against Baghdad in March 2003.
“You couldn’t see the planes, but you could hear them soaring through the sky,” said Ligia Uribe de Torres, 74, whose apartment overlooks La Carlota’s runway.
Ricardo Sans, 69, an engineer who lives in the mountains around Caracas, recalled leaping out of bed and throwing himself to the ground after hearing a loud “vibration” at about 2am.
Looking out his window, Sans saw between four and six helicopters flying directly over his house in the darkness, and smoke billowing out from a defensive position near another of Caracas’s most symbolic addresses: the Cuartel de La Montaña barracks where the remains of Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez, were put on display after his death in 2013.
Unlike other bleary-eyed residents, Sans had no doubt what was he was witnessing and began calling friends and relatives. “I immediately thought it was what most of Venezuela had been waiting for – and it was indeed so,” he said.
The precise details of the US aerial assault on Venezuela, later confirmed by both Donald Trump and Venezuelan authorities, remain unclear.
But as day broke over Caracas, its residents – and the world – received more sensational news. Trump announced that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been “captured” during the raid and flown to a naval warship in the Caribbean Sea.
“They got taken out in a matter of seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump told Fox News.
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, accused the couple of being “international narco traffickers”, saying on social media: “They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
Citing US officials, CBS News reported that Maduro had been seized by members of the elite army unit Delta Force, which was responsible for the 2019 killing of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. There was speculation the raid had been conducted with help from an elite army helicopter unit called the Night Stalkers, whose pilots were involved in the 2011 killing of the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Maduro’s allies, including the defence minister, Gen Vladimir Padrino López, and the interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, denounced the US “invasion” and urged citizens to take up arms against the foreign aggressors. “We forcefully reject this criminal, vile and fascist Yankee imperialist attack on our homeland,” Carmen Mele?ndez, the mayor of Caracas, told state-run TV, calling on citizens to rally around Venezuela’s “valiant … great helmsman”.
Speaking by telephone to the same network, the vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, demand?ed immediate proof from the White House that Maduro and Flores were alive. She also called on citizens to resist, although Reuters reported that Rodríguez was herself in Moscow.
Apart from the squawk of the yellow and blue “guacamaya” macaws for which Caracas is famed, many of the city’s streets were eerily silent on Saturday morning as people braced for an uncertain future. “Right now it seems like a pandemic morning … You can’t hear a single car,” said one resident. “It’s like waking up in the middle of lockdown.”
Trump officials celebrated the supposed start of a new era for the oil-rich country after Maduro’s 12-year grip on power was seemingly broken, 18 months after he was accused of stealing the 2024 election. “A new dawn for Venezuela! The tyrant is gone,” tweeted Christopher Landau, the US deputy secretary of state.
But in Caracas many doubed democratic change was nigh. There was no immediate sign that the apparent winner of the 2024 election, Edmundo González, would be able to return from exile with his main ally, the Nobel peace prizewinner María Corina Machado. In a statement, Machado said she was preparing to take power and that Venezuela was entering “decisive hours”.
Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for Crisis Group, said: “It seems, from what I’m seeing so far, that this was an operation to remove Maduro from power – but it’s not regime change. The regime remains in power.”
Gunson said he believed it was possible the US blitz would precipitate an armed uprising against what was left of Maduro’s nominally leftist regime. But it seemed more likely that another hardliner from Maduro’s political movement would simply fill his shoes, plunging the country even deeper into dictatorship.
“Venezuelans could end up being worse off, ironically, after the departure of Maduro. It’s very early days … but this is certainly not a moment to be hanging out the bunting and opening the champagne,” Gunson said. “This is just the beginning.”
Hurtado said that after the attack, members of pro-regime paramilitary gangs known as “colectivos” had taken to the streets of his neighbourhood in commando gear.
“We don’t know whether they will allow us to go out and buy food, or whether there will be free movement. Normally at this time of year there’s always a party, but right now there’s no one – [it’s] like there’s been a blackout, everything is silent.”
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