A US news crew film­ing down the is­lands (DDI) near Trinidad record­ed two Amer­i­can naval ves­sels mov­ing through the nar­row chan­nel be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela.

ABC News cor­re­spon­dent Matt Rivers was on a fish­ing boat down the is­lands when the team ob­served a de­stroy­er and an am­phibi­ous as­sault ship east. The ves­sels were too dis­tant for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, ac­cord­ing to the re­port.

In­de­pen­dent satel­lite an­a­lysts lat­er of­fered more de­tail. SA De­fen­sa, an un­of­fi­cial ac­count track­ing naval ac­tiv­i­ty, post­ed im­agery from the Eu­ro­pean Space Agency’s Sen­tinel-2 iden­ti­fy­ing an Ar­leigh Burke-class de­stroy­er and a San An­to­nio-class land­ing plat­form dock in the Gulf of Paria. The ac­count said both ships were po­si­tioned off the coasts of Trinidad and Venezuela and in prox­im­i­ty to the USS Iwo Ji­ma, which it placed north of the area.

Res­i­dents in east and parts of west Trinidad re­port­ed hear­ing he­li­copter ac­tiv­i­ty over their com­mu­ni­ties on Mon­day night.

Of­fi­cial de­tails have been woe­ful­ly lack­ing on naval and avi­a­tion move­ments or the scope of the "train­ing ex­er­cis­es" in­volv­ing US forces.

What lit­tle that has been re­leased is a so­cial me­dia post from the US em­bassy. It showed a pic­ture of chil­dren in a do­jo with a cap­tion say­ing, "Gun­nery Sergeant Je­re­mi­ah Wal­lace of the 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit vis­it­ed the Ryu Dan Do­jo Youth Em­pow­er­ment Cen­ter in Ch­agua­nas, where he spoke to chil­dren about dis­ci­pline and lead­er­ship."

It was the on­ly con­firmed on-is­land ac­tiv­i­ty in­volv­ing US per­son­nel.

Mean­while, US South­ern Com­mand al­so post­ed a video show­ing AV-8B Har­ri­er II jets con­duct­ing live-fire ex­er­cis­es from the USS Iwo Ji­ma in the Caribbean Sea as part of Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear. South­com did not dis­close the lo­ca­tion of the drill.

Lo­cal au­thor­i­ties have not com­ment­ed on the pres­ence of the ves­sels near T&T wa­ters.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not speak pub­licly on the mil­i­tary train­ing on Tues­day. Her last state­ment on the is­sue re­mains Mon­day's mes­sage that, "The US has nev­er re­quest­ed use of our ter­ri­to­ry to launch any at­tacks against the peo­ple of Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go ter­ri­to­ry will not be used to launch any at­tacks against the peo­ple of Venezuela."

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has said he con­tin­ues to mull op­tions for pos­si­ble strikes in­side Venezuela.