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President Donald Trump said on Friday (June 12) that a US airstrike had killed Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, also known as Niño Guerrero, the leader of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua.
Guerrero is the notorious leader of one of the world’s bloodthirsty terrorist organizations, Tren de Aragua, Trump said in a post on Truth Social. He said that at his direction, the United States Southern Command successfully executed a rapid and lethal kinetic strike to eliminate him.
According to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, the strike was carried out earlier this week, and it has been confirmed that Guerrero, the leader of the terrorist organization, was killed in the attack.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry said the operation included specialized technical assistance and was carried out through cooperation and intelligence sharing between US and Venezuelan authorities.
In February 2025, the US State Department designated Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) for alleged involvement in various criminal activities.
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President Trump has claimed that the foreign terrorist organization has been coordinating its activities in the United States with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The gang is known for its involvement in human trafficking.
The Tren de Aragua gang is also linked to extortion, kidnapping, money laundering, contract killings, smuggling, and organized retail theft from Panama to Brazil and along the Andean corridor, Latin American police officials say, according to Reuters.
Reuters’s reporting contributed to this article.
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