US military strikes on narco-trafficking boats : The US Navy claimed Tuesday that it launched attacks on three boats accused of carrying drugs in Latin American waterways, killing 11 people in one of the worst days of the Trump administration’s months-long campaign against alleged traffickers.
The series of attacks performed Monday upped the death toll to at least 145 people since the administration began targeting “narcoterrorists” in small vessels in early September.
US military strikes on narco-trafficking boats see full information below
Like the majority of the military’s claims about the 42 confirmed attacks, US Southern Command stated that it targeted accused drug traffickers along recognised smuggling routes. It stated that two vessels carrying four people each were attacked in the eastern Pacific Ocean, while a third boat carrying three persons was hit in the Caribbean Sea.
The military provided no evidence that the vessels were transporting drugs, but did publish videos of boats being destroyed on X.
The Southern Command videos show the boats moving or bobbing in the water before the explosives envelop them in flames. Before the two small, open vessels are destroyed, people may be seen sitting in them.
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President Donald Trump has stated
President Donald Trump has stated that the United States is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America, justifying the attacks as a necessary escalation to prevent the drug flow.
Critics have questioned the general legality and efficiency of the strikes, in part because the fentanyl responsible for many fatal overdoses is typically transported to the United States by land from Mexico, where it is manufactured using ingredients imported from China and India.
The boat strikes also garnered strong condemnation once it was revealed that the military killed survivors of the first boat attack in a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers defended the executions as legitimate and necessary, but Democratic politicians and legal experts called them murder, if not war crimes.
The strikes came after the Trump administration launched one of the greatest buildups of US military strength in Latin America in decades, as part of a pressure campaign that resulted in the detention of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He was taken to the United States to face narcotics trafficking accusations following an American raid on January 3.
The world’s largest aircraft carrier was ordered to the Caribbean late last year and commanded last week to head to the Middle East as tensions between the United States and Iran rose.
The USS Gerald R. Ford and three escorting destroyers were in the mid-Atlantic on Tuesday and were no longer in the US Southern Command’s area of operations, according to a Navy officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified ship movements.
The Ford will join a fleet of US warships in the Middle East, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.
Since Maduro’s detention, the US military has recorded additional boat strikes, and American forces have also seized oil tankers associated with Venezuela as part of the Trump administration’s larger plans to gain control of the South American country’s oil.
Republicans in Congress have blocked Democratic-led efforts to limit Trump’s ability to launch additional attacks in Venezuela.
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