Al Jazeera: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Donald Trump has said US forces have killed an \u201cinfamous leader\u201d of Tren De Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the administration has branded a global \u201cterrorist\u201d organisation and drug-smuggling cartel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Ni\u00f1o Guerrero,\u201d Trump said in a post on his Truth Social website late on Friday, referring to gang leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump added that the operation was in collaboration with Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement, Venezuela\u2019s government confirmed it participated in the operation in the southeastern state of Bolivar, stating that Flores was killed during \u201cclashes with members of criminal groups\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a post on X, said the strike had occurred earlier in the week, targeting a Tren de Aragua site in Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe operation underscores the shared US and Venezuelan commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists and deny them any safe haven in our hemisphere,\u201d he posted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tren de Aragua originated from a notorious prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, from where it controlled a vast drug trafficking and criminal network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group has some 7,000 members spread across South America and the US. It was labelled a terrorist organisation by the US in February 2025, early on in Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago have also labelled it a terror group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gang leader Flores, 42, escaped from the Tocoron prison in Venezuela along with other gang leaders just before a police raid in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al Jazeera: President Donald Trump has said US forces have killed an \u201cinfamous leader\u201d of Tren De Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the administration has branded a global \u201cterrorist\u201d organisation and drug-smuggling cartel. \u201cAt my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Ni\u00f1o Guerrero,\u201d Trump said in a post on his Truth Social website late on Friday, referring to gang leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores. Trump added that the operation was in collaboration with Venezuela. In a statement, Venezuela\u2019s government confirmed it participated in the operation in the southeastern state of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58575,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58573\/revisions\/58575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}