US-Venezuela operation kills leader of Tren de Aragua gang

CARACAS: The leader of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua was killed in a joint operation by the United States (US) and Venezuela, authorities in the South American nation said on Friday.

Founded in Venezuela, Tren de Aragua has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and is also active in Colombia, Peru and Chile.

“There were clashes with members of these criminal structures, in which Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias ‘Nino Guerrero,’ was neutralized,” Venezuela’s Ministry of Communications said in a statement.

The ministry said the “joint operation” took place in the southeast of Bolivar state, and involved “specialized technological support” and intelligence exchange between the United States and Venezuela.

US President Donald Trump said earlier Friday that American forces carried out a deadly strike on the gang leader.

“At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Nino Guerrero,” a post on Trump’s official Truth Social platform said.

The attack “was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well,” the post read, appearing to refer to the interim leadership of Delcy Rodriguez, who has been in place since the US removed Nicolas Maduro from power in January.

“As a result, Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else,” the post read.

The social media post was accompanied by a 10-second video, showing an overhead view of a building surrounded by greenery before an explosion is seen, sending up a cloud of smoke. No people are clearly visible in the footage.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also confirmed that the kinetic strike hit “a Tren de Aragua (TdA) compound in Venezuela.”

‘Countless’ violent acts

Federal prosecutors in New York filed racketeering, drug and firearms charges in December against the gang leader.

“Guerrero Flores has been the mastermind of Tren de Aragua’s evolution from a Venezuelan prison gang into a transnational terrorist organization,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement when the indictment was announced.

Tren de Aragua, under Guerrero Flores’s leadership, has “committed countless acts of violence, extortion, and drug trafficking all over North America, South America, and Europe,” he said.

The US State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

According to a report by the InSight Crime think tank, Guerrero made Tren de Aragua “what it is today during his incarceration at Tocoron.”

Under his leadership, Tocoron “became one of the country’s most notorious prisons, largely because of the unofficial policy of the Venezuelan government of handing control of certain prisons… over to criminal leaders known as pranes.”

“This freedom and the gang’s criminal revenues allowed for the construction of a zoo, a swimming pool, a playground, a restaurant, and a nightclub inside the prison,” the report added.

The joint operation is the latest example of improving ties between Caracas and Washington since the capture of Nicolas Maduro.

The two countries restored diplomatic relations in March, which had been severed in 2019.

The US is in the process of reactivating its embassy in Caracas.