 "This handout photo released by the US Defence Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) shows the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely in the Red Sea on June 7, 2024. It is one of the warships deployed towards Venezuela for counternarcotics operations. AFP file")
The US has struck another boat in international waters on suspicion of “transporting illegal narcotics” from Venezuela, killing three people, President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post.
“This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility," he said.
Trump claimed that the illegal narcotics, which he dubbed “a deadly weapon poisoning Americans”, were on their way to the US.
Last month, the US military conducted an attack on a boat, targeting the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and killing 11 people. The fresh attack also comes amid spiralling tensions in the Caribbean as a large US naval build-up sparks speculation that Washington may be seeking regime change in Caracas.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has evaded questions on how the earlier operation on a suspected Venezuelan drug boat was conducted.
“We knew exactly who they were, exactly what they were doing, what they represented, and why they were going where they were going,” he said earlier this month. When a reporter countered, “How did you know?”, Hegseth said, “Why would I tell you that?”
The strikes have raised questions about whether they are within international law or effectively amount to extrajudicial killings. Still, Trump insisted the United States was confident that the dead men were traffickers.
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Meanwhile, last week, Venezuela’s interior ministry said that none of the 11 people killed in a US military strike on a boat belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
“They openly confessed to killing 11 people. We have done our investigations here in our country, and there are the families of the disappeared people who want their relatives, and when we asked in the towns, none were from Tren de Aragua, none were drug traffickers,” Venezuela’s interior minister Diosdado Cabello said.
Cabello came down heavily on the Trump administration, saying, “A murder has been committed against a group of citizens using lethal force.”
He asked, “How did they identify them as members of the Tren de Aragua? Did they have, I don’t know, a chip? Did they have a QR code and [the US military] read it from above in the dark?”
With inputs from agencies