Image: A woman attends a march to demand the release of kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 8, 2026.Federico PARRA / AFP via Getty Images

Several helicopters were dropping bombs, and the windows shattered from the shockwaves,” Caracas resident Paola Rosal told Truthout, describing her experience of the U.S. attack on Venezuela on January 3.

Rosal, a mother of three who lives in Ciudad Tiuna, a massive government-built housing project located in the Fuerte Tiuna military complex in Caracas, said she was alone getting ready to take a shower when “the power went out, and the first bomb fell near my building.” Feeling a sense of terror and panic, Rosal describes how she fled and, for a while, was alone in a carpark. Her mother, who was in her own apartment with her daughters, witnessed a bomb drop in front of her apartment which shattered all of the windows.

“When we went outside to take cover, the next bomb fell,” Rosal told Truthout. “People didn’t know where to go for shelter. It was so awful that my daughter doesn’t want to go back, and like her, many other people feel the same way.” Rosal, a married 40-year-old owner of a bodega, has long voted for the leaders of the Bolivarian revolution: first President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), and then President Nicolás Maduro, who won his first election by a narrow margin in early 2013.

Rosal said she has concrete criticisms of Maduro’s government: For example, she is concerned that the government’s decision to distribute weapons to citizens in preparation for a full-scale U.S. invasion could result in pro-government civilian armed groups (colectivos) gaining more power, and that worries her.

But Rosal was vehement in her outrage and fury in response to the U.S. attack.

Click here for full article.