Name: US President Donald Trump ordered strikes Venezuela capital, BBC's partner CBS told | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-01-05T03:59:01.000Z
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We're taking you through the developments of the breaking news that airstrikes have been carried out on the Venezuelan capital Caracas, with the BBC's US partner, CBS News, saying that it has heard from US officials that the president, Donald Trump, ordered those strikes to be carried out.

Well, let's return to the International Crisis Group's senior analyst in Venezuela, Phil Gunson.

Let's see if we can find out a little bit more detail now about Venezuela's reaction to this, because we have had a statement which mentioned their reaction.

Well, they are obviously rejecting this, complaining in the strongest possible terms, saying that this is all to do with oil and strategic minerals, that it's an attempt by US Imperialism, as they would put it, to grab Venezuela's resources for themselves.

They're calling for the international community to react.

I think the interesting thing is that although we've seen reports of this decree of an emergency being declared by President Maduro, look these, this is a moment at which you would, you know, if you were certain, if you were on the government side, you would want the government and perhaps the military high command to be on air to, to be reassuring people that they're still there, that they're still in control, they're still in command.

And, and really what we've seen so far has been, you know, it's very much, it seems, improvised.

You know, the communique seems to have been dashed off.

It's not signed by anybody in particular.

So that's not reassuring people who, who, who were, you know, on the government side who reject this attack by the US if that's what it is.

And what options does the Venezuelan government have?

So if we look at what they said in that statement, one of the things they said was the entire country must mobilize to defeat the, this imperialist aggression.

What resources does Venezuela have to fight back against this?

You know, on a military level, it's really impossible for, for the Maduro government to resist.

The big fear, according to military analysts of US Forces when contemplating this kind of intervention was air defenses.

But it does appear that, you know, either those air defenses were neutralized, they didn't work.

There doesn't appear to be, as far as we know so far, of course, it's early days, but

there doesn't appear to have been any response from the ground.

Certainly no aircraft have been reported shot down so far.

So, you know, that suggests that, you know, that the military is not capable of resisting in any, in any way at all.

Although on paper, the Venezuelan military is one of the strongest in the region.

And they do have a couple of dozen or nearly nearly a couple of dozen.

I think a few of them have fallen out of the sky in recent years.

But they do have Sukhoi 30s Russian fighter bombers, which are some of the most sophisticated aircraft possessed by any air force in the region.

But there's no report that they even took off.

There's not really much that Maduro can do when faced with, you know, what is it, 10 or 15% of the entire.

Fleet worldwide is, is arrayed against them, including the world's most worthy attacks, maybe launch literally, there isn't much they can do if they did choose to resist, if assuming that they're capable of it wouldn't last for very long, assuming that the US Is really determined to overthrow the government of Maduro.

Phil Gunson, thank you so much for your thoughts and analysis there.

That's Phil Gunson, and thank you for bearing with the link there.

But we have plenty more on this on the BBC's live page, which you can see there.

We've got live updates continuing, plus some of the images that are being verified as well.

And one of the things that you can find on the live page page is a testimony from an eyewitness.

Journalist Vanessa Silva, who lives in Caracas, saw an explosion from her window and said that the sound of it was huge and stronger than thunder and it caused her home to vibrate.

And as you may have heard from one of our guests earlier, Caracas is a valley, so the sound reverberated around it.

And what she said was that her heart was pumping and she was scared by how close the explosions were.

She says that there's now silence in the city, but

everyone is still frenetically messaging each other to see if they're okay.

She also adds that a relative of hers saw something falling from the sky and 10 seconds later saw and heard a boom.

So that's just one of the examples of the eyewitness accounts coming through from the region.

And you can keep up to date with those on the BBC Live page and of course by following us here on BBC News.

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US President Donald Trump ordered strikes Venezuela capital, BBC's partner CBS told | BBC News

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