Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said he is open to negotiating with Washington to combat drug trafficking in the first sign that sustained U.S. pressure is taking its toll on the embattled South American leader.

“The U.S. government knows, because we’ve told many of their spokespeople, that if they want to seriously discuss an agreement to combat drug trafficking, we’re ready,” Maduro said in a taped interview aired Thursday on state TV channel teleSUR.

But in his wide-ranging conversation with Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, he declined to comment on an alleged ground attack on a docking facility along Venezuela’s shoreline last month, which some media reports said was conducted by the CIA.

The spy agency declined to comment on the reports it was behind what would be the first-known land attack on Venezuela by the U.S. The CIA rarely, if ever, publicly acknowledges its work.

But President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. had “knocked out” a facility tied to Venezuela. “We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said in the interview. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”

Trump did not provide further details during the interview with WABC radio and NBC News has not independently confirmed the strike. The White House did not offer any further comment on his remarks when asked about them on Friday.

In an extraordinary and unprecedented acknowledgment from a commander in chief, Trump also said in October that he had authorized the CIA to take unspecified action in Venezuela.

Maduro’s interview comes in the midst of a monthslong pressure campaign by the Trump administration on the country that has seen dozens of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific and an increase in U.S. naval presence off the country’s coast.

In November, America’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived in the Caribbean.

The White House says the strikes are aimed at stopping drug cartels and stemming the flow of narcotics into the U.S. But some U.S. lawmakers have questioned their legality and the use of the U.S. military to carry them out.

The latest strike on two alleged drug-trafficking vessels came New Year’s Eve, U.S. Southern Command said in a statement. Five people were killed, it said.

Since launching the strikes in September, the Trump administration has not provided evidence supporting its allegations about the vessels or the people on board.

The U.S. also seized oil tankers off the Venezuelan coast last month and has ordered a blockade of all sanctioned tankers and has worked to prevent them from going in and leaving the country.

Asked about what the U.S. is trying to achieve, Maduro said in his interview that it was seeking to impose itself “through threats, intimidation and force,” according to a translation of his interview by The Associated Press.

But he also appeared to strike a conciliatory tone, suggesting there was room for cooperation between Caracas and Washington — when it comes to drug trafficking and the country’s vast oil reserves.

“If they want oil, Venezuela is ready for U.S. investment, like with Chevron, whenever they want it, wherever they want it and however they want it,” he said.

Maduro has previously denied having any ties to the drug trade, and has accused the U.S. of “fabricating” a war against him. But he told Ramonet that he wanted peace and an amicable relationship between the two countries.

“The U.S. people should know that here they have a friendly, peaceful people, and they also have a friendly government,” Maduro said, according to the English translation of the interview published on teleSUR’s website.

The U.S. does not recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president after the 2024 election was widely seen as rigged.

Trump said in November he was considering talks with Maduro, but in an interview the following month, he said that Maduro’s “days are numbered.” In a separate interview with NBC News, he said that he was not ruling out war with Venezuela.

Asked about the alleged strike on Venezuelan soil last month, Maduro seemed to evade the question, only saying he could talk about it “in a few days,” according to the AP translation.

Nathan Huguenin, 19, said he wasn’t able to sleep after escaping from the fire that tore through a packed Swiss ski resort bar during a New Year’s party, killing dozens of people, many in their teens and early 20s.

“I feel like it’s actually a nightmare, that I’m going to wake up,” Huguenin told journalists on Thursday. “I closed my eyes, and everything kept coming back to me, because I saw people being resuscitated. I saw people completely burned. I saw people dying. Honestly, it was quite complicated and quite difficult to stomach.” 

The Le Constellation bar in the Swiss ski town of Crans-Montana was popular with a younger crowd. The legal age to drink wine and beer in the Valais region where it’s located is 16, so many young people had come to the bar to celebrate the new year. 

The owner of a nearby store told British broadcaster Sky News that Le Constellation was known for letting young people in. 

Parisian tourist Axel Clavier, 16, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was at the bar when the fire broke out, and he felt like he was suffocating.

Describing the situation as “total chaos,” Clavier said he managed to escape by forcing a window open with a table. He said one of his friends was killed, two or three remain missing, and he was “still in shock.”

A witness named Alexis, 18, who saw the fire from outside Le Constellation, told local media that many people inside had tried to break through the windows, according to British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail.

“It was a real flame coming out. It was coming out and … in fact, people were running through these flames,” he said. “You could see the shadows. People were trying to break the glass with chairs in the bar.”

Another witness, who chose not to share his name, told CBS News’ partner network BBC News that he thought his brother was in the bar when the fire broke out.

“I came and tried to break the window to help people to exit, and after that I went in,” he told the BBC. Inside, he said he “saw people burning … I found people burning from head to foot, no clothes anymore.”

He said his brother had not been hurt, and that he could easily have been in the bar himself.

“I went in this bar every day this week,” he told the BBC. “The day I didn’t go, it burned.”

Oscar, 19, also witnessed the fire and told Sky News Le Constellation was “a very popular bar with teenagers, so I think it’s a highly concentrated place where you find a lot of teenagers. That’s why we wanted to go there.”

He said he and his friends had tried to get into the bar on New Year’s Eve, but had been told it was full.

“But we knew, like, other ways in,” Oscar said.

He said he tried using a code to access a side door, and getting someone already in the bar to open another entrance for him and his friends, but nothing worked. 

“Like three minutes later, we’re just in front, like three meters away – it exploded. It’s crazy,” said Oscar. “Many people tried running out and people were banging on the windows, because it’s like a winter garden … It’s like a semi-outside spot but still with windows. And everyone was banging on the windows and stuff. Screaming. It was like a horror movie. But they couldn’t get out. I think the windows were too thick. Then people, like, fell on each other coming out, fully burned.”

“Even people ask me: Am I burned in my face, am I burned?” Oscar recalled. “Because I think the adrenaline made them not feel anything. Because they were completely, I don’t know, fully burned and they didn’t feel anything.”

Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, said the EU would help provide medical assistance to the victims of the fire through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.