Explosion caught on video of the fire at the Primazol warehouse in Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela, on December 24, 2025. Photo: La Verdad.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—On Monday, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced a new extrajudicial execution as part of its Operation Southern Spear, killing two civilians in a small boat in Eastern Pacific waters. In addition, since Sunday, US President Donald Trump has claimed that the US carried out land strikes on Venezuelan territory; however, the US regime has not provided evidence of these attacks.
The US publicized its latest assassinations in the manner that has now become familiar: US SOUTHCOM announced on social media that a new round of executions of defenseless Latin American civilians had been carried out in the waters of the Eastern Pacific ocean. It is worth noting that Venezuela does not possess any coastline on the Pacific Ocean.
This latest execution represents the 30th strike on a small boat in the region and raises the number of assassinated civilians to 107 since September 2, when the first US strike was reported. To date, 55% of the victims (59) were killed in Eastern Pacific waters, while 45% (48) of the reported killings occurred in Caribbean Sea waters. Out of the 30 strikes, 19 have occurred in the Eastern Pacific, and 11 have occurred in the Caribbean.
A blurry video of the attack was attached to the SOUTHCOM post. The post declared that the action was authorized by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. International and US legal and military experts, and the United Nations, have labeled these actions as extrajudicial killings and war crimes. As usual, victims were not identified nor was any information released regarding the precise location or the contents of the boats that were attacked.
Trump is completely losing it!
Primazol—the private chemical company supposedly hit by a "strike"—is located 5 km away from Lake Maracaibo coast. There are no docks, no boat loading areas, and no maritime access.
The facility is in the San Francisco Industrial Zone of… https://t.co/dgywPWTwYj pic.twitter.com/R2a8L3fPI7
— Orinoco Tribune (@OrinocoTribune) December 30, 2025
In recent months, the US regime has deployed more than 18,000 troops in the Caribbean and the Pacific as part of its newest military campaign. According to the US ruler’s own statements, this campaign has most recently shifted to the goal of “recovering” [i.e., stealing] Venezuela’s oil, which the US claims belongs to it. Analysts and Venezuelan authorities had expressed their belief, since the beginning of this military campaign, that its actually goal is regime change—removing Venezuela’s democratically elected socialist president, Nicolas Maduro—in order to control Venezuela and facilitate the exploitation of its natural resources for US imperial interests.
Alleged land strikes
In what analysts claim is a disinformation operation, Donald Trump announced on a podcast during the weekend that there were US land strikes carried out on docks in Venezuela. While he did not mention Venezuela at that moment, mainstream media and social media influencers began spreading rumors shortly after regarding a fire at Primazol, a private chemical supplier company in Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela. Reported on December 24, the fire was framed as the first target of such alleged strikes.
On Monday, from Mar-a-Lago, the US ruler was more explicit, clearly claiming there were attacks on Venezuelan land that targeted docks and alleged “narco-terrorist” facilities. He cited a “big explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.”
If Washington’s claims are proven real, they will constitute another alarming violation of the international order by the US and an act of war that Venezuela will be forced to respond appropriately. However, no evidence has been provided of such land strikes, and Venezuelan authorities have not confirmed the US narrative.
A simple open-source information analysis made by Orinoco Tribune on Monday showed that the Primazol fire occurred in the San Francisco Industrial Zone of the San Francisco municipality in Maracaibo on December 24, 2025. The damaged warehouse is located 5 kilometers from the coast of Maracaibo Lake and one block from heavily populated neighborhoods of the second-largest city in Venezuela—Barrio El Gaitero and Barrio Sur América. Thus, there are no docks nearby.
Primazol has released a public statement explaining that the fire was caused by an electrical accident in an area where polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin is stored.
Imperial Disaster: An Assessment of Trump’s Operation in the Caribbean
The review conducted by Orinoco Tribune clearly showed that the alleged US strike against Primazol was another piece of fake news spread for the purposes of psychological warfare. “If a US strike actually happened there, we would see hundreds of videos online by now,” Orinoco Tribune wrote in a social media post. “While real [Venezuelan law enforcement] operations have smashed drug-linked companies like Grupo Lamar recently, these MSM reports and Trump’s delusional statements simply do not add up. No other video or open-source evidence has been released to demonstrate the alleged US land strikes.”
Despite the implausible US claims, mainstream media outlets ran with the news on Monday night, claiming that the alleged land strikes occurred and were part of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert operation initiated several weeks ago. However, no proof, in the form of videos or photos, was presented. CNN and the New York Times cited only “sources familiar with the matter” as the origin of their reports.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
OT/JRE/SL
