The CIA conducted the first known U.S. attack on Venezuelan territory when it carried out a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela last week, a government official familiar with the operation told The Intercept. The strike marks a new escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign against President Nicolás Maduro’s government, which has included dozens of attacks on supposed drug smuggling boats. A separate U.S. strike on Monday killed two alleged “narco-terrorists” in the Pacific Ocean.

The December 24 drone strike hit a dock that U.S. officials believe was used by members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. No people were on the dock at the time of the attack and no one was killed, according to the official. The details of the strike, which were first reported by CNN, offer a clearer picture of an attack first disclosed by President Donald Trump in a series of vague statements over several days.

“Now we’re going after the land,” Trump said during a Christmas Eve phone call to troops aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is deployed to the Caribbean Sea as part of the campaign against Maduro. “They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump then told John Catsimatidis, a billionaire and Trump donor who owns New York’s WABC radio station, on Friday. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. We hit them very hard.”

On Monday, Trump provided more detail, explaining that the United States had “hit” an “implementation area” in Venezuela. “There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump told reporters at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. “That’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”

Trump has publicly acknowledged he authorized CIA operations in Venezuela. Asked if the CIA had carried out the Christmas Eve attack, Trump said: “I don’t want to say that.”

The government official, who spoke with The Intercept on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information, said they had been briefed on the CIA’s role in the attack.

A spokesperson writing from a CIA email and identified only as Ryan declined to comment on the Christmas Eve strike in an email to The Intercept.

“This is the lawless Trump administration in action.”

“Days after it took place, the U.S. public is finally learning about a CIA airstrike on foreign soil for which there is no legal justification or congressional authorization. This is the lawless Trump administration in action,” Win Without War policy director Sam Ratner told The Intercept. “The only way forward is for Congress to stop Trump’s illegal strikes and hold those in the administration who have so flagrantly broken the law to account.”

The CIA regularly conducted drone strikes during the early years of the war on terror, beginning in Yemen in 2002 and in Pakistan in 2004. During the Obama administration, the U.S. military largely took over such attacks, and since then, the armed forces have conducted the overwhelming majority of drone strikes. Heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper drones have recently been

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