Cumana: The first body washed ashore on Trinidad’s north-eastern coast soon after the United States carried out its first strike in September on a boat in the Caribbean. Villagers said the corpse had burn marks on its face and was missing limbs, as if it had been mangled by an explosion.

The tides deposited another corpse on a nearby beach days later, drawing a wake of vultures. Its face was similarly unrecognisable, and its right leg appeared to have been blown off.

The bodies have fuelled a mystery that is gripping parts of Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean nation that is within sight of Venezuela’s coast: Who were they? Did a US strike kill them? Will more bodies appear on Trinidad’s beaches?

The intrigue lays bare how the fallout from the US military campaign targeting Venezuela h

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