US Politics
US military strikes another boat it claims was carrying drugs as Trump works to increase pressure on Venezuela
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The U.S. military struck another alleged drug-trafficking vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Monday, the Pentagon announced, as the Trump administration’s campaign against Venezuela and alleged drug traffickers in the region intensifies.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” U.S. Southern Command wrote on X. “Two male narco-terrorists were killed. No U.S. military forces were harmed.”
In the grainy black-and-white video, a military aircraft appears to target a low-slung vehicle in the sea below, which then explodes.
In its announcement, the military did not include evidence to verify its claims.
The strike was the 30th such attack since September, and it brings the total number of known casualties to 107, according to the Associated Press.
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Last week, the president disclosed what may the first known land strike in his campaign. When asked about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump described a Christmas Eve attack on an alleged drug facility.
“We just knocked out, I don’t know if you read or you saw, they have a big plant or a big facility…where the ships come from,” the president said Friday during an interview with talk radio host John Catsimatidis. “Two nights ago we knocked that out, so we hit them very hard.”
The comments appear to match details in a CNN report about an alleged CIA drone strike against a port facility on a remote part of the Venezuelan coast. The government believes the facility is used by the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang as part of its drug distribution efforts, sources familiar with the alleged strike told CNN.
The alleged attack hit an empty facility and did not result in any casualties, the sources said. The CIA has not acknowledged any such strike.
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The president has long suggested a wider land campaign against Venezuela could take place.
“I think you’re going to find that this is war,” Trump said in early December. “And very soon we’re going to start doing it on land too.”
Also this month, the Trump administration began seizing sanctioned oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, a nation which the White House accuses of being in league with traffickers. (Venezuela denies this, and its National Assembly voted this month to criminalize the seizures.)
The president has also reportedly authorized the CIA to undertake covert operations inside the country.
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Venezuela has accused the president of using the strikes as a pretext to force Maduro from power.
But domestic critics of Trump allege that the killings are war crimes against noncombatants, while the Trump administration insists the strikes are justified because it claims the U.S. is in an armed conflict with drug groups.
The administration further angered critics when the Pentagon announced this month would not release the full video of a strike in which the military allegedly killed two survivors of an initial attack.