Washington [US], June 14: The US military has killed the leader of the transnational criminal group Tren de Aragua, President Donald Trump has announced.
"At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Nino Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth," Trump said on Friday in a post on his Truth Social platform, which also carried a video appearing to show the strike.
Trump said that "this action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well." The Venezuelan government also confirmed the deadly attack on Guerrero on Saturday.
During the joint operation by forces from Venezuela and the US in the south-east of Bolívar state, there were also clashes with suspected members of the gang, the Venezuelan statement said.
Bolívar is in the south-east of the country and borders Brazil and Guyana.
Earlier in the week, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the strike was carried out on "a Tren de Aragua (TdA) compound in Venezuela."
US Southern Command's (SOUTHCOM) Francis Donovan thanked "Venezuelan security forces for their support to the successful joint operation against a Tren de Aragua compound that resulted in the death of the narco-terrorist organization's leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias 'Niño Guerrero.'"
"Guerrero was a wanted fugitive charged by the US Department of Justice with ordering, directing, and facilitating acts of terrorism and violence in the United States," Donovan added.
Considered Venezuela's most powerful gang, Tren de Aragua is linked to drug trafficking, extortion, illegal mining and people smuggling, and has expanded its operations into other Latin American countries and the US. The Trump administration designated the group as a terrorist organization earlier this year.
"Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drugs lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong," Trump said.
The US Justice Department indicted Guerrero - whose full name is Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores - in absentia in December. A $5 million reward was offered for his capture.
Prosecutor Jay Clayton described Guerrero at the time as the mastermind behind the development of Tren de Aragua from a gang active in prisons to an "international terrorist organization." The Trump administration has taken extraordinary measures against what it has labelled "narco-terrorism," including by carrying out strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
According to the SOUTHCOM, more than 200 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in such strikes since they started in September.
Oil-rich Venezuela has been in a phase of political upheaval since the US overthrew authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro at the beginning of the year.
Source: Qatar Tribune
