Three fishermen were resting under a roof of coconut palms on the afternoon of December 18 when a roar made the earth rumble shortly after 5 in the afternoon in the community of Poolosü, in the Alta Guajira parish of the Venezuelan municipality of Guajira, on the shores of the Gulf of Venezuela.
Restless and scared, they approached a kind of hut where they used to keep fishing nets and other instruments they use for their work. Suddenly, it had been destroyed. “We thought it was lightning,” one of the witnesses to the event told BBC Mundo.
According to them, they found remains that led them to think that it was not an act of nature and they confirmed that the epicenter of the alleged explosion was another nearby structure made of wood and palm leaves that was used as a warehouse.
Reports about the explosion in the municipality of Guajira have led to speculation both inside and outside Venezuela about whether it was a US action, after President Donald Trump assured a few days ago that his country had carried out a first attack on Venezuelan territory.
“The smell of gunpowder was strong,” said one of the witnesses from the Wayuu indigenous group that mostly populates that town in the western state of Zulia, bordering Colombia, who asked to reserve his identity for fear of reprisals.
“We found pieces of metal with words in English,” said the witness, a member of a community that speaks mostly Wayuunaiki, the Wayuu’s own language, and some Spanish.
BBC Mundo was able to verify that the scene remains in a state similar to that described by the fishermen: broken trees and branches; palms scattered in a radius of 30 meters; and the structure on the ground, with the sea just a few steps away.
Splinters and gray metallic remains of what locals speculate could be parts of a suspected explosive also remain scattered in the sand.
“I could feel the strong impact, but we didn’t know where it came from,” added another of the fishermen about how disoriented they were after feeling the explosion.
An information published on December 30 by the American network NBC reported that two witnesses from the Wayuu community in that region of northwest Venezuela described an explosion that occurred on December 18 in that coastal town as “mysterious” and “without explanation.”
NBC clarified that it could not establish a link between that explosion and US President Donald Trump’s announcement about a first attack by US military 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 appear to be gray fragments of a missile near the coast in Alta Guajira, engraved with numbers and the word “warning,” which translates into Spanish as “warning.”
One of the sources told the American media that the explosion was so strong that several members of his family were deaf for a few hours.
Trump announced an attack, Maduro remains silent
On December 26, US President Donald Trump revealed an alleged first attack in Venezuela during an interview with his friend, millionaire John Catsimatidis, and, days later, he confirmed his announcement during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Later reports from CNN and the newspaper The New York Times They assured that the United States intelligence agency, the CIA, confirmed that the attack was carried out with a drone.
Neither Maduro nor other members of his government have referred to Trump’s reported attack inside Venezuela.
“That may be a topic that we may discuss in a few days,” Maduro said this Thursday when asked about the alleged US military attacks on Venezuelan territory in an interview with Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet broadcast on the VTV channel.
“What I can tell you is that the national defensive system, which combines the popular, military, and police forces, has guaranteed and guarantees the territorial integrity, the peace of the country and the use and enjoyment of all our territory,” he added.
Maduro said he was open to talking “seriously” with the United States about oil, immigration and combating drug trafficking agreements.
For weeks, Trump had warned that attacks on land targets in the South American country would happen “soon” and would be “easier” than bombing boats loaded with drugs in the Caribbean.
Trump ordered an unprecedented deployment of US armed and naval forces in the Caribbean Sea in August to stop the shipment of drugs to his country. That deployment includes thousands of troops, dozens of fighter planes and warships, including the largest and most powerful aircraft carrier in the world, the USS Gerald Ford.
These forces have attacked 35 boats and killed more than a hundred of their crew members on the coasts of northern Venezuela and the Pacific Ocean, according to the War Department led by Pete Hegseth.
The United States said it eliminated 5 vessels and killed 8 crew members between December 30 and 31.
The United States 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 circle close to political power in Caracas, as well as seizures of oil tankers that would form part of a ghost fleet with which Venezuela would seek to evade economic sanctions.
Overflight and military deployment in Poolosü
Sukhoi planes from the Venezuelan Air Force flew over Guajira the day after the alleged explosion occurred, on Friday, December 19, witnesses and residents of Poolosü told BBC Mundo. There was also a ground deployment of soldiers who collected evidence, the same witnesses said.
Agents from intelligence agencies and the Venezuelan Army remained at the coastal location for three days, they said. The allegedly impacted location is a few minutes away from a headquarters of the Bolivarian National Guard located in the town of Cojoro, and a few kilometers from two Army battalions.
Since then, fishermen in the area have expressed fear of going out to work. They have been fishing near the shores for about a month, as they describe the situation on the high seas as “tense.” They say they fear new attacks on the banks.
The witnesses to the alleged explosion on December 18 on the coast of Poolosü said they wanted the press to find out about the event immediately, but access to the area is complex not only because of the state of the terrain, but also because of the armed control exercised by irregular groups and drug trafficking cartels in that place in Alta Guajira.
Inhabitants of that town in Venezuela’s Guajira claimed that the place had become “months ago” a shipping port for narcotics that operate under the surveillance of the Clan del Golfo and criminal organizations in Mexico.
These criminal groups monitor “closely” that no one has free access to the place, since larger boats with better engines than traditional fishing boats are visible, possibly linked to illicit activities.
Venezuelan authorities assured residents that the December 18 attack had been carried out by them in their fight for drug trafficking, but locals doubt that version.
The residents of Poolosü stated that soldiers from the Bolivarian National Armed Forces have been asking more questions than sharing certainties.
“The Army has been here asking questions to all of us who work in fishing and they took all the evidence as if they were investigating, that’s why we believe that they were not the ones in the attack,” said a woman who claimed to have heard the explosion.
A first controversy in a company in Maracaibo
President Trump’s statements about the start of ground attacks in Venezuela fueled speculation last week about whether the explosion had actually occurred, as well as when and where, and whether it was possible that he was referring to the fire that occurred in the early hours of December 24 at a chemical products company in the municipality of San Francisco, in the state of Zulia, near its capital, Maracaibo.
Primazol, dedicated to the import of chemical inputs for pharmaceutical laboratories, animal nutrition, food and beverages, dismissed rumors that its facilities had been attacked and attributed the incident to a fault in its electrical wiring.
The company, located about 7 kilometers from the western coast of Lake Maracaibo, one of the largest in America, with access to the Gulf of Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea, published videos from its security cameras to show how the fire started in one of its warehouses and the work of firefighters.
Speculation about Primazol’s alleged connection to drug trafficking operations was fueled a day later by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who assumed that “a factory” in the city of Maracaibo served the ELN guerrilla and was the target of an attack by US military forces.
“We know that Trump bombed a factory in Maracaibo. We fear that they will mix coca paste there to make cocaine and take advantage of the location on Lake Maracaibo,” Petro wrote on December 30 on his X account.
“It is simply the ELN. The ELN is allowing, with its rattle and its mental dogma, to invade Venezuela,” he added about that guerrilla organization, with origins in the 60s and which anti-Chavismo accuses of associating with the government of Nicolás Maduro for illicit businesses such as illegal mining in southern states of the country.
Primazol responded to the Colombian president saying that they do not manufacture or package “any type of narcotics” and asked him to stop “staining our name.”
On the sandy shores of Poolosü, they want “the truth to be known.”
“We are afraid in this place,” confessed one of the witnesses about the roar that cut short that quiet afternoon last month.
