A lingering smell of explosives hung over Venezuela’s capital Caracas on Saturday (January 3, 2026) as shocked residents took stock after an early-morning U.S. strike that ousted strongman Nicolas Maduro.
While a few hundred Maduro supporters gathered to clamor for his freedom, the streets were otherwise eerily quiet.
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“I felt the explosions lift me out of bed. In that instant I thought: ‘My God, the day has come,’ and I cried,” Maria Eugenia Escobar, a 58-year-old resident of the city of six million people, told AFP.
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