President Donald Trump announced that US Southern Command killed Nini Guerrero, leader of the Tren de Aragua criminal-terror organization, in an operation coordinated with the Venezuelan government. The announcement comes after the US released aerial footage of the strike earlier today.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that US Southern Command killed Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores — known as Nini Guerrero — the leader of the Tren de Aragua criminal-terror organization, and stated the operation was conducted in coordination with the Venezuelan government. The confirmation adds an explicit acknowledgment of Caracas's involvement to the thread The Zioneer has tracked since 04:09 Jerusalem, when first reports emerged.
The thread opened at 04:09 with Trump's initial announcement of the strike and a claim of coordination with Venezuelan authorities. By 04:09, Venezuela's Ministry of Communication reported the strike occurred in Bolívar State as part of a joint operation. At 04:09, Trump released aerial footage of the strike. At 06:25, General Francis L. Donovon, head of US Southern Command, thanked Venezuela's Bolivarian National Armed Forces for their role, calling it a joint operation — the first on-record acknowledgment of Venezuelan military involvement. The draft's new confirmation by Trump at this hour now elevates the coordination claim from official suggestion to a direct presidential statement.
Tren de Aragua, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US, originated as a prison gang in Venezuela and evolved into a transnational criminal-terror network involved in mass murder, drug trafficking, and extortion, as The Zioneer has reported. Guerrero was indicted in December 2025 in New York on federal conspiracy and extortion charges.
No further details on the precise operational timeline have been released, and the US has not disclosed the specific intelligence or sequence of events that led to the strike.
7 developments
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Source and signal
- Internal intake