‘A lot of gunfire’: Here’s how the US raid to capture Maduro unfolded

Early on the morning of January 3, under a full moon in Caracas, the might of the American army was on full display.

Special operations helicopters streaked across the sky at low altitude, exchanging fire with Venezuelan air defenses on the way to and from the site. Operators of the army's “Delta” unit captured leader of the country Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores.

Fighters and bombers supported the raid, striking air defenses and other targets in Caracas and three coastal states.

And moonlight was the only thing much of Venezuela's capital had to endure as US cyberwarfare operators and intelligence agencies disrupted the city's power supply.

Here's how raid to capture Maduro – Operation Absolute Resolve was a failure, according to the president's public comments. Donald TrumpThis is reported by the Russian administration and the media.

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Preparations for the raid took several months, explained Air Force Gen. Dan “Razin” Cain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Group CIA officers In August, he began working secretly to track Maduro. Other segments of the intelligence community have also turned their attention to the Venezuelan leader: the National Security Agency's electronic interception capabilities, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's image analytics capabilities, and others.

Pentagon gradually increased US troops in the region, first by deploying missile ships and an amphibious Marine task force, then fighters, then an aircraft carrier, then additional fighters, and so on until a massive armada is created.

Army special operators tasked with the mission built a replica of the Maduro compound – just as was done during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan – and trained extensively.

“We rehearse over and over again, not to get it right, but to make sure we don't get it wrong,” Kane said.

All the pieces were ready “in early December,” Kane said. But choosing the right day for the mission proved difficult.

Kane said the military wants good weather for risky helicopter flights. Maduro also needed to be in a place where U.S. troops could capture him with minimal risk, including to civilians.

On the night of January 2, conditions turned out to be favorable. Trump gave the “go ahead” order at 10:46 p.m. Eastern Time.

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The raiding party, which included law enforcement officials, entered Venezuela in at least seven helicopters, flying about 100 feet above the Caribbean Sea.

The pilots of the Army's elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, whose motto “Night Stalkers Don't Give Up” was partly delivered by Kane in a thinly veiled speech during a news conference, climbed mountains, negotiated low cloud ceilings and endured enemy fire on their way to Maduro's compound.

Trump said the Venezuelan military was “very alert.” But the timing of the American mission came as a surprise, and Maduro's forces “were completely overwhelmed and very quickly incapacitated.”

An eyewitness captured video of helicopters flying across the skies of Caracas as explosions lit up mountains in the distance. More than 150 aircraft took part in the operation, including fighters and bombers from the Marine Corps, Navy, active-duty Air Force and Air National Guard.

Another member of the public observed a US helicopter firing missiles at an unknown ground target.

The strike force landed in Maduro territory at 1:01 a.m. ET.

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The raid unfolded quickly in the darkness.

The complex “was more like a fortress than a home,” Trump said.

Maduro and Flores ran to the fortified steel safe room. They probably hoped that once they had a foothold there, crisis response troops would come to their aid.

But US operators knew about the room and were prepared to break into it with blowtorches and other tools—Trump claimed special operators could breach the door in an average of 47 seconds during training before the raid.

The American raiders resisted fiercely, firing “heavily,” the president said.

Several U.S. troops suffered gunshot and shrapnel wounds, although officials said none of the injuries were life-threatening. One helicopter was shot down by Venezuelan fire but “remained airworthy,” Kane said.

The Venezuelan security officer did not make it to his safe room in time. Maduro couldn't close the door.

“He was rushed,” an ebullient Trump said in a Saturday morning interview on “Fox & Friends.”

According to Kane, after the capture of Maduro and Flores, the raiding parties had to fight out of Venezuelan airspace.

By 3:29 a.m. ET, the helicopters were back over the Caribbean Sea.

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Maduro and Flores were flown by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima, a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship that serves as a mother ship for Marines.

After several hours of silence in the Pentagon and the White House, Trump announced the capture of Maduro through True Social Post at 4:21 a.m. ET.

He later shared a photo of the blindfolded Venezuelan leader clutching a water bottle aboard a ship and wearing a gray Nike tracksuit.

Maduro, long seen as a seasoned survivor of domestic political crises, will next face his upcoming indictment in federal court in New York.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: This is how the US attacked Venezuela and captured Nicolas Maduro