The CIA is reported to have carried out a bombing operation within Venezuelan territory, CNN and The New York Times report in follow-up to President Trump touting that the US had knocked out "a big facility".

CNN while citing unnamed sources, reports that the CIA conducted a drone strike on a remote dock along Venezuela's coastline, after the US suspected the site was being used to store and transport illegal drugs, and which were supposedly bound for America.

Reports indicate the location was unoccupied at the time of the strike, which occurred earlier this month. The New York Times published a similar account based on anonymous sources, specifying that the operation took place last Wednesday.

As we detailed, President Trump had on Friday in a radio interview disclosed something which missed the attention of the US and global media. He let slip that a large land site had been knocked out by a strike from US forces in the Caribbean.

Trump may have actually assumed the attack which he disclosed publicly for the first time was already being reported on, but it had not. He was being interviewed by John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire who owns the WABC radio station in New York on his The Cats & Cosby Show, and the two were talking about the Venezuela campaign. 

"They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from," Trump said, though he did not explicitly identify the exact location or even country attacked. "Two nights ago we knocked that out."

Interestingly, the remarks generated almost no headlines for much of that weekend. But by Monday he expanded on those remarks during a press conference, saying the target was located on Venezuela's coast and that a "major explosion" occurred at a dock where boats were supposedly loaded with drugs.

"There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs," he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida.

"They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around."

But even after this, neither CIA, nor White House, nor Pentagon would comment. Even more strange was that Venezuelan officials themselves have also remained silent, issuing no public statements regarding the alleged attack. It is perhaps the case they don't want the population to panic, or else don't want to give acknowledgement of a successful land strike by Washington.

Speculation has persisted an effort to identify which facility was hit and what damage was done. Some analysts have highlighted a 'mystery' explosion at an industrial zone in San Francisco municipality, Zulia state, given the timing fits (Wednesday, Dec. 24).

San Francisco Venezuela's second largest city, in the northwest corner of the country, and near the coast. However, local reports also suggest the likelihood the fire was sparked by an electrical accident.

But it is also clear the CIA is active in Venezuela, given White House authorized lethal CIA missions targeting the Latin American country in October - though these may have been occurring long before then.

The American president has also ordered a naval blockade targeting Venezuelan oil exports, with US forces already having seized two tankers transporting Venezuelan crude in international waters, while a third ship reportedly avoided boarding and continued into the Atlantic.

The Pentagon is seeking to enforce what has been described as a "quarantine" of Venezuelan oil over the coming months to further strain the country's economy. Amid all of this, there's a likelihood of yet more land strikes to come.