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The US attacked Venezuela and captured its long-serving president Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, with Donald Trump promising to put the country under American control for now, even as Venezuelan officials vowed defiance,
The Guardianreports.
As part of a dramatic overnight operation that knocked out electricity in parts of Caracas, US Special Forces captured Maduro in or near one of his safe houses, Trump said.
With Maduro in US custody, "we will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition", the US president said during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
We can’t take a chance that someone else takes over Venezuela who doesn’t have the interests of Venezuelans in mind."
Trump hailed the attack - in which the New York Times reported at least 40 people, including civilians and Venezuelan soldiers, died - as "an assault like people have not seen since world war two".
A plane carrying Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, landed in upstate New York on Saturday evening, multiple news outlets reported.
Maduro, in US custody hours after being seized from his Caracas compound in a US raid, landed at Stewart air national guard base after 4.30pm in a white Boeing 757. He was expected to be taken by helicopter to New York City, where he will be processed and transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center prison, officials told NBC News.
They said the Venezuela president was set to appear in court by Monday evening.
Video shared by an official White House account appears to show Maduro in handcuffs being escorted by agents at the US Drug Enforcement Administration offices in New York.
The dramatic intervention in Caracas was condemned by Democrats on Capitol Hill and several leaders around the world as the most dangerous example of US imperialism since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Trump, who campaigned for the presidency with a promise to end foreign wars, did nothing to quell those fears when he told reporters that the US would be temporarily seizing control of Venezuela and its oil infrastructure.
Maduro, a 63-year-old former bus driver handpicked by the dying Hugo Chávez to succeed him in 2013, has accused the US of seeking to take control of his nation’s oil reserves, the biggest in the world.
At his press conference, Trump said: "We’re going to have our very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so."
