Washington/Caracas: US President Donald Trump on Saturday said the United States will oversee a transitional government in Venezuela, following what he described as an “extraordinary” US military operation carried out overnight at his direction.

Addressing reporters from Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said the United States will oversee a transitional government in Venezuela. “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” he said, adding that the operation aimed to bring the “outlaw dictator Nicolás Maduro to justice.”

“Late last night and early today, at my direction, the United States Armed Forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela. Overwhelming American military power, air, land, and sea, was used to launch a spectacular assault. It was an assault like people have not seen since World War II. It was a force against a heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas to bring outlaw dictator Nicolás Maduro to justice. This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history,” Trump said.

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The US President also highlighted plans for Venezuela’s oil sector. “As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place. We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he said.

Trump said the US intervention seeks “peace, justice and liberty for the great people of Venezuela.” “We can’t take a chance if somebody else takes over Venezuela, who doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind. We’re not going to let that happen. We are there now, but we are going to stay until such time till proper transition takes place. We’re going to run it essentially until such time,” he said.

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The President confirmed that Maduro and Flores have been indicted in the Southern District of New York for a campaign of “deadly narco-terrorism against the United States and its citizens.” “No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday… all Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military, working with U.S. law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night along with his wife, Cilia Flores, both of whom now face American justice,” Trump said.

He said the assault, carried out in a “heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas”, was one “like people have not seen since World War II”.

“And if you think about it, we’ve done some other good ones, like the attack on [Iran’s general Qassem] Soleimani, the attack on [ISIL leader Abu Bakr] al Baghdadi,” he said.

“No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday, or frankly, in just a short period of time, all Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless,” Trump said.

“Not a single American service member was killed, and not a single piece of American equipment was lost. We had many helicopters, many planes, many, many people involved in that fight,” he added.