United States President Donald Trump said on Friday that the US army performed its third fatal attack on an alleged drug trafficking vessel.
In a social networking publication, Trump stated that the offensive killed three people and was held against a “affiliated to a designated terrorist organization that performs drug trafficking in the Usouthcom responsibility.” He did not provide more accurate details about the attack site or the nationality of the dead.
The Pentagon passed on questions about the White House attack, which did not answer a request for clarification from the Associated Press about the origin of the vessel.
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“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel trafficked illicit narcotics and moved through a known route of drug trafficking on their way to poisoning Americans,” Trump said in the publication.
The US president also published a video of the attack showing a vessel sailing at high speed before being hit by two missiles and sink into an explosion.
“It was at this moment that the narcoterrorists realized they had wrong,” said White House communications director Steven Cheung, at X, in a post with the video.
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Trump announced on Monday that the US Army had performed an attack on a boat that allegedly transported drugs from Venezuela. The attack also killed three people on board.
This occurred after another military offensive on September 2 against what the Trump government said it was a quick speedboat that carried drugs, which killed 11 people. The American president claimed that the boat was operated by the Aragua Tren gang, which was listed by the US as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year.
The Trump government justified military action as a necessary climb to contain the flow of drugs to the United States.
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However, several senators, democrats and some republicans, as well as human rights groups, questioned the legality of Trump’s action. They see it as a potential abuse of executive power, in part because the armed forces were used for law enforcement purposes.
The Trump government has not yet explained how the military evaluated the boat’s burden and determined the supposed affiliation of passengers to gangs before the attacks on the vessels. The offensive occur after an increase in American maritime forces in the Caribbean.
In Venezuela, some speculate if the attacks are part of a plan to try to overthrow dictator Nicolás Maduro. Maduro said after the first US attack that an American video released by Trump was created with artificial intelligence.
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The Venezuelan dictator again criticized the United States earlier this week, accusing the Trump government of using drug trafficking accusations as an excuse for a military operation whose intentions are “intimidating and seeking a change in regime” in the South American country.
On Friday, hours before Trump’s publication on the new attack, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said there is “an unlavose war.”
“You can see how people, whether drug traffickers or not, were executed in the Caribbean Sea,” said Padrino López during an assessment of military exercises that started this week with 2,500 soldiers on Caribbean Island of La Orchila.
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“Executed, without defense,” the minister insisted, questioning why the boats, allegedly originating from Venezuela, were not intercepted before being attacked.
“With so much technology and so much power and unable to intercept a ship in the Caribbean Sea waters…” he said.
