Instant karma: Moment Venezuelan soldier ‘fires a Manpad rocket at US helicopter before being instantly hit by return fire’
This is the moment a Venezuelan soldier fired a Man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) missile at a US helicopter over Caracas – only to miss with the chopper returning fire seconds later.
The clash occurred during America’s daring mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife at their fortified compound.
The audacious attack, dubbed ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’, involved more than 150 aircraft launched from 20 bases around the Western Hemisphere, including F-35 and F-22 jets, and B-1 bombers.
Footage shows Venezuelan security forces firing a missile from a Russian Igla MANPADS at an American helicopter near the Fuerte Tiuna military base in Caracas.
As the missile veered off course and missed its target, US soldiers retaliated with 30 mm fire within 3-4 seconds of the launch.
One week before the operation took place, US President Donald Trump phoned Maduro privately and gave him one last chance to flee, but the dictator refused to budge.
With the pieces in place, Trump approved the operation five days ago, but military and intelligence planners suggested he wait for better weather and less cloud cover.
On Friday, at 11.46pm Caracas time (3.46am on Saturday in the UK), Trump gave final authorisation for the lightning raid, telling his team of Delta Force soldiers and pilots: ‘Good luck and Godspeed.’
Footage shows Venezuelan security forces firing a missile from a Russian Igla MANPADS at an American helicopter near the Fuerte Tiuna military base in Caracas
As the missile veered off course and missed its target, US soldiers retaliated with 30 mm fire within 3-4 seconds of the launch
The operation was a success and remained a secret until Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was captured. Trump posted this picture of Maduro aboard USS Iwo Jima on Saturday
At 4:21am (9.21am GMT) on Saturday morning, Trump sent a message on his Truth Social platform: the US had carried out a daring mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
The mission came as a surprise, but according to sources close with the matter, planning for one of the most complex US operations in recent memory had been in the works for months and included detailed rehearsals.
The Pentagon has overseen a massive military buildup of forces in the Caribbean, sending America’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, 11 warships and more than a dozen F-35 aircraft.
In total, more than 15,000 troops have poured into the region for what US officials have long described as anti-drug operations.
According to one of the sources, Trump senior aide Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe formed a core team working on the issue for months with regular – sometimes daily – meetings and phone calls.
They often also met with the president.
Elite US troops, including the Army’s Delta Force, created an exact replica of Maduro’s safe house and practiced how they would enter the strongly fortified residence.
The troops ran drills similar to the exercises performed on the mock-up of Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad home used before the 2011 raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader.
The CIA also had an asset close to Maduro who would monitor his movements and was poised to pinpoint his exact location as the operation unfolded.
For months, the team – including one source within the Venezuelan government – had been spying on Maduro, recording where he slept, what he ate, what he wore and even, according to top military officials, ‘his pets’.
Late on Friday night and into early Saturday, Trump and his advisers huddled as a number of US aircraft took off and carried out strikes against targets inside and close to Caracas, including air defense systems.
The aircraft included helicopters carrying an extraction force that began their flight into Venezuela at just 100ft above the water, according to Gen Dan Caine, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff.
‘We had a fighter jet for every possible situation,’ Trump told Fox News Channel’s ‘Fox & Friends’.
Sources have told Reuters the Pentagon had also quietly moved into the region refueling air tankers, drones and aircraft specialising in electronic jamming.
With the strikes taking place, US Special Forces made their way into Caracas heavily armed, including with a blowtorch in case they had to cut through steel doors at Maduro’s location.
Around 1am EST Saturday, troops arrived at Maduro’s compound in downtown Caracas while being fired upon.
One of the helicopters was hit, but still able to fly.
Social media videos posted by residents showed a convoy of helicopters flying over the city at low altitude.
Once they reached Maduro’s safe house the troops, along with FBI agents, made their way into the residence, which Trump described as a ‘very highly guarded … fortress’.
‘They just broke in, and they broke into places that were not really able to be broke into, you know, steel doors that were put there for just this reason,’ Trump said. ‘They got taken out in a matter of seconds.’
Once the troops were inside the safe house, Maduro and his wife surrendered. Trump said the Venezuelan leader had tried to reach a safe room but was unable to close the door.
‘He got bum rushed so fast that he didn’t get into that,’ Trump said.
Some US forces were hit, Trump said, but none were killed.
‘Over the weeks through Christmas and New Year, the men and women of the United States military sat ready, patiently waiting for the right triggers to be met and the president to order us into action,’ General Dan Caine, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, told a news conference on Saturday morning.
While Venezuela has not confirmed how many people were killed during the US raid on Maduro’s compound in Caracas, the New York Times, citing a Venezuelan official, reported on Sunday that the death toll stood at 80 and was expected to rise.
Maduro was transported to New York, where he will be tried on charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-importation conspiracy and weapons charges
Trump suggested Saturday that America used cyberattacks or other technical capabilities to cut power off in Caracas.
If true, the intervention would mark one of the most public uses of US cyber power against another country in recent memory.
Such missions are typically highly classified, and the US is understood as one of the most advanced nations in cyberspace operations globally.
‘It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have, it was dark, and it was deadly,’ Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago detailing the operation.
Caine added that US Cyber Command, US Space Command and combatant commands ‘began layering different effects’ to ‘create a pathway’ for US forces flying into Venezuela early Saturday.
The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not elaborate on what those ‘effects’ entailed.
NetBlocks, a watchdog monitoring cybersecurity and the governance of the Internet, spoke of a loss of Internet connectivity in Caracas during power cuts early Saturday morning.
Alp Toker, founder of NetBlocks, said in an email Saturday that if cyberattacks contributed to these outages, ‘it will have been targeted, not impacting the broader network space,’ wrote Politico.
