“The smell of gunpowder was strong, we thought it was lightning”: Witnesses speak of the alleged explosion that destroyed a structure in the Alta Guajira in Venezuela

“I could feel the strong impact, but we didn’t know where it came from,” another fisherman added, recounting how disoriented they were after feeling the explosion.

An information published on December 30 by the American broadcaster NBC reported that two witnesses from the Wayuu community in this region of northwestern Venezuela described an explosion that occurred in this coastal town on December 18 as “mysterious” and “without explanation.”

NBC clarified that it could not establish a connection between this explosion and US President Donald Trump’s announcement of an initial attack by US forces on Venezuelan soil that caused “a large explosion” in a port area.

According to Trump, boats were loaded with drugs in the attacked area.

Images broadcast by NBC showed what appeared to be gray fragments of a missile near the coast of Alta Guajira, engraved with numbers and the word “Warning,” which means “warning” in Spanish.

One of the sources told American media that the explosion was so powerful that several members of his family were deafened for several hours.

On December 26, US President Donald Trump revealed an alleged first attack in Venezuela in an interview with his friend, millionaire John Catsimatidis, and confirmed his announcement a few days later in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Later reports from CNN and the newspaper The New York Times They assured that the US secret service CIA had confirmed that the attack was carried out with a drone.

Neither Maduro nor other members of his government have referenced Trump’s reported attack in Venezuela.

“This could be a topic that we discuss maybe in a few days,” Maduro said this Thursday in an interview with the Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, broadcast on the VTV channel, when asked about the alleged US military attacks on Venezuelan territory.

“What I can tell you is that the national defense system, combining popular, military and police forces, has guaranteed and guarantees the territorial integrity, peace of the country and the use and enjoyment of our entire territory,” he added.

Maduro said he was open to talking “seriously” with the United States about oil, immigration and combating drug trafficking deals.

Trump had warned for weeks that attacks on land targets in the South American country would happen “soon” and would be “easier” than bombing drug-laden boats in the Caribbean.

Trump ordered an unprecedented deployment of American military and naval forces in the Caribbean in August to stop the flow of drugs into his country. This deployment involves thousands of soldiers, dozens of fighter aircraft and warships, including the world’s largest and most powerful aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford.

According to the War Department headed by Pete Hegseth, these forces attacked 35 boats along the coasts of northern Venezuela and the Pacific Ocean, killing more than a hundred of their crew.

The United States said it destroyed five ships and killed eight crew between December 30 and 31.

U.S. military pressure against Maduro, whom Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls an “illegitimate” ruler, also includes individual sanctions against family members and members of the political circle in Caracas, as well as the seizure of oil tankers that would be part of a ghost fleet that Venezuela would use to try to evade economic sanctions.

Sukhoi planes from the Venezuelan Air Force flew over Guajira the day after the alleged explosion, on Friday December 19, witnesses and residents of Poolosü told BBC Mundo. There was also a ground operation by soldiers collecting evidence, the same witnesses said.

Secret service and Venezuelan army agents remained at the coastal town for three days, they said. The site reportedly affected is just minutes from a Bolivarian National Guard headquarters in the town of Cojoro and a few kilometers from two army battalions.

Since then, fishermen in the area have been afraid to go to work. They have been fishing near the coast for about a month because they describe the situation at sea as “tense”. They fear new attacks on the banks, they say.

The witnesses to the alleged explosion on December 18 on the coast of Poolosü said they wanted the press to know about the incident immediately, but access to the area was difficult, not only because of the nature of the terrain, but also because of the armed control exercised in this location in Alta Guajira by irregular groups and drug trafficking cartels.

Residents of this town in Guajira, Venezuela, claimed that “months ago” the place became a drug shipping port under the supervision of the Clan del Golfo and criminal organizations in Mexico.

These criminal groups pay “close attention” to ensure that no one has free access to the place, as larger boats with better engines than traditional fishing boats are visible, which may be linked to illegal activities.

Venezuelan authorities assured residents that the December 18 attack was carried out by them in the fight against drug trafficking, but locals doubt this version.

Poolosü residents said Bolivarian National Armed Forces soldiers asked more questions than shared certainties.

“The army was here and asked questions of all of us who work in the fishery and they took all the evidence as if they were investigating. That’s why we believe they were not the ones involved in the attack,” said a woman who claimed to have heard the explosion.

President Trump’s comments about the start of ground attacks in Venezuela led to speculation last week about whether the explosion had actually occurred, when and where, and whether it was possible that he was referring to the fire that broke out in the early hours of December 24 at a chemical plant in the municipality of San Francisco, Zulia state, near the capital Maracaibo.

Primazo, which specializes in importing chemical supplies for pharmaceutical laboratories, animal nutrition, food and beverages, dismissed rumors of an attack on its facilities, attributing the incident to a fault in electrical wiring.

The company, located about seven kilometers from the western coast of Lake Maracaibo, one of the largest in the Americas with access to the Gulf of Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea, released videos from its surveillance cameras to show how the fire broke out in one of its warehouses and how firefighters worked.

Speculation about Primazol’s alleged connection to the drug trade was fueled a day later by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who suggested that “a factory” in the city of Maracaibo served the ELN guerrillas and was the target of an attack by US forces.

“We know that Trump bombed a factory in Maracaibo. We fear that they are mixing coca paste there to make cocaine and taking advantage of the Lake Maracaibo location,” Petro wrote on his X account on December 30.

“It is simply the ELN. The ELN allows, with its rattle and its mental dogma, to invade Venezuela,” he added of this guerrilla organization, whose origins date back to the 60s and which Anti-Chavismo accuses of being linked to the government of Nicolás Maduro for illegal businesses such as illegal mining in the southern states of the country.

Primazol responded to the Colombian president saying they do not produce or package “any type of narcotics” and called on him to stop “tarnishing our name.”

On the sandy beaches of Poolosü they want “the truth to come out”.

“We are afraid in this place,” one of the witnesses confessed over the roar that ended that quiet afternoon last month.

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