US forces kill 4 people in a new strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela
US forces carried out a strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat off the coast of Venezuela on Friday, killing four people, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.
“Four terrorist drug traffickers were killed on board the boat in the strike,” Hegseth said on X, which carried out in international waters off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting large quantities of drugs toward America to poison our people.
He explained that the US President gave the order to launch the strike.
“These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people end,” Hegseth added.
This brings the death toll from the four US strikes on boats that Washington says are smuggling drugs to 21.
This strike came after the Trump administration announced that the United States was engaged in an armed conflict with drug gangs.
Legal experts say that using military force against individuals suspected of smuggling drugs beyond the US border, declaring an armed conflict, is illegal.
In a notice sent to Congress, the Trump administration provided legal justification for at least three previous strikes.
The text issued by the Pentagon stated, “The President determined that these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States”.
He described the suspected smugglers as outlaw combatants, as he said on Truth Social that “a boat loaded with enough drugs to kill between 25,000 and 50,000 people was intercepted early this morning off the coast of Venezuela, preventing it from entering the United States”.
On the other hand, the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, on Friday denounced an “armed aggression” perpetrated by the United States to “change the regime” in Venezuela, stressing that he was prepared to mobilize reserve troops “if necessary to transition from unarmed confrontation to armed confrontation”.
The Venezuelan government on Thursday denounced an “illegal incursion” by US aircraft into an area under its airspace.
For his part, Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the attack, stating via X that “launching missiles when it’s possible to intercept boats, as Colombia is doing, is a violation of the principle of universal legal proportionality and therefore constitutes an act of assassination”.
At the end of August, the United States sent warships to the Caribbean and ten F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico, as part of an operation it said was aimed at combating drug trafficking.
Washington accuses Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his government of running a vast drug trafficking network into the United States.
