Trump administration officials told lawmakers on Monday that then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were injured after hitting their heads while fleeing from U.S. forces trying to arrest them, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Maduro and Flores ran and tried to hide behind a heavy steel door inside their compound, but the door frame was low and they hit their heads as they tried to escape, officials said, according to the sources.
Delta Force operators captured them and provided them with first aid after they were taken out of the compound, the sources said, reports the Telegraph.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, General Dan Caine, Attorney General Pam Bondi and CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed key lawmakers for more than two hours Monday evening.
Maduro and his wife appeared in court on Monday with visible injuries, and Flores' lawyer told the judge that she "suffered significant injuries" during her kidnapping.
"In addition, it is believed that she may have a fracture or severe bruising to her ribs," he added.
Her attorney requested an X-ray and a full physical evaluation to ensure her health moving forward.
Flores swayed and lowered his head at times during the hearing, and Maduro struggled to sit and stand at times, according to reporters in the courtroom. Sketches of Flores in the courtroom showed him with bandages on his head.
Administration officials who briefed lawmakers on Monday described Flores' head injury as minor, sources told CNN.
Several Delta Force operators themselves suffered injuries during the operation as a result of a major firefight that erupted with a Cuban rapid reaction force that was stationed near Maduro's compound, administration officials said.
The bodies were hit by bullets and shrapnel, but their injuries are not life-threatening and they are expected to make a full recovery, officials reiterated.
There were nearly 200 U.S. personnel on the ground in Caracas during the operation, Hegseth said Monday at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia.
Informants did not have a good estimate of how many Venezuelans or Cubans were killed during the operation, but Cuba's government said on Monday that 32 of its military and police officers were killed.
Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday that the number is likely higher than that, describing what took place as a "furious gun battle."
"The vast majority of the casualties and deaths that were caused were against the Cuban guard that had exercised control over the people of Venezuela," Miller said.
Officials insisted during the briefing that Maduro's capture was not a regime change operation, as the Venezuelan government remains largely intact and is now led by his deputy Delcy Rodriguez, the sources familiar with the briefing said.
Rubio said the administration sees him as more pragmatic than Maduro and as someone the US can work with, while opposition leader Maria Corina Machado would not be able to exert control over the regime's security forces, the sources said.
The administration's policy decision regarding Rodriguez was influenced by a classified CIA analysis of the impact of Maduro's no longer being president and the short-term implications of his possible departure, according to a source familiar with the matter. It was not a recommendation based on an expectation of regime change in Venezuela, the source added. /Telegraph/
