US President Donald Trump says Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as Niño Guerrero, has been killed in a US military strike.
Guerrero was the leader of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang and US-designated terrorist organisation infamous for narco-terrorism operations that spread across Latin America, the United States and over the Atlantic to Spain.
The group has also been linked to extortion, kidnapping, money laundering, contract killings, smuggling and organised retail theft.
The US state department had offered rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to Guerrero’s arrest.
In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump said Guerrero was killed in a “swift and lethal kinetic strike”.
Trump’s post included a video showing a green roofed building disappearing under a cloud of billowing smoke caused by a massive explosion.
The president added that the strike was “coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well”.
Venezuelan authorities confirmed their involvement in what they described as a “joint operation”.
“There were clashes with members of these criminal structures, in which Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias ‘Nino Guerrero’, was neutralized,” the ministry of communications said in a statement.
In January, the US captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his compound to face criminal charges in New York.
The Trump administration accused him of collaborating with Tren de Aragua, and named Guerrero as a co-conspirator in Maduro’s indictment.
