Trump says the US military again targeted a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela

Washington – President Donald Trump said the US military was once again aimed at a boat that would have transported drugs to Venezuela, killing three on board the ship and suggested that the military targeting of the cartels could be widened.

“The strike has occurred while these confirmed narcoterorists from Venezuela were in international waters carrying illegal narcotics (deadly poisoning of the Americans!) Directed in the United States,” said Trump in a social position announcing the strike. “These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels are a threat to national security in the United States, the foreign policy and the interests of the United States.”

The strike was carried out almost two weeks after another military strike on what the Trump administration said it was a vessel boat that carries the drug from Venezuela which killed 11.

Addressing journalists from the oval office on Monday later, Trump said it had been shown images of General Dan Caine’s last strike, president of the joint staff chiefs.

Asked what proof of the United States had that the ship was carrying drugs, Trump replied: “We have proofs. All you have to do is look at the cargo that has been splashed in the ocean – large bags of cocaine and fentanyl everywhere.

Trump also suggested that US military strikes targeting the alleged that smuggled drug addicts could be extended to land.

He said that the US military saw fewer ships in the Caribbean since the first strike at the start of the month. But he said that the cartels were still smuggling on the ground.

“We are telling the cartels right now, we will also stop them,” said Trump. “When they come to the ground, we will stop them in the same way as we have stopped the boats. … But maybe by speaking a little, it will not happen. If that does not happen, it is good.”

Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, took X later to warn the cartels that the United States “would follow them, kill them and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere – at the time and to the places of our choice”, echoing the muscular language used by previous administrations during the world war against the terrorist. The White House has also published a short unsecified video clip on the social networks of the strike.

The Trump administration justified military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of medication in the United States.

But several senators, democrats and some Republicans have questioned the legality of Trump’s action. They consider it as a potential excess of the executive authority in part because the military was used for the purposes of application of the law.

The Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California said that he was writing a resolution of war powers aimed at preventing American troops from engaging in new strikes until it is officially authorized by the Congress.

Schiff said he was concerned about “these murders without law endangered us” and could encourage another country to target American forces without appropriate justification.

“I don’t want to see us enter a war with Venezuela because the president breathes from annoying ships of water,” said Schiff.

Human rights groups have also raised fears that strikes will be the subject of international law. The White House offered rare information on how operations met or the judicial authorities under which they were carried out.

“Let’s be clear – this can be an extrajudicial execution, which is a murder,” said Daphne Eviatar, who heads the Human Rights of Amnesty International USA. “There is absolutely no legal justification for this military strike.”

The Trump administration said self -defense as a legal justification for the first strike, Secretary of State Marco Rubio arguing that drug cartels “constitute an immediate threat” for the nation.

US officials said the strike at the start of the month targeted Tren from Aragua, a Venezuelan gang designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. And they indicated that more military strikes on drug targets would arrive while the United States seeks to “wage war” from cartels.

Trump did not specify if Tren de Aragua was also the target of the Monday strike.

The Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the reported strike.

The Trump administration specifically kept the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro for the scourge of illegal drugs in the American communities.

Maduro at a press conference earlier Monday was unleashed in the United States government, accusing Trump administration to use drug trafficking as an excuse for a military operation whose intentions are “to intimidate and request a change of diet” in the South American country.

Maduro has also repudiated what he described as a weekend operation in which 18 navies made a descent into a Venezuelan fishing boat in the Caribbean.

“What were they looking for?” Tuna? What were they looking for? A kilo of Vivaneau? Who gave Washington for a missile destructive sending 18 armed navies to attack a tuna fishing ship? ” He said. “They were looking for a military incident. If the tuna fishing boys had weapons and used weapons in the Venezuelan jurisdiction, it would be the military incident that the heat, the extremists who want a war in the Caribbean, are looking for. “

Addressing Fox News earlier on Monday, Rubio reiterated that the United States did not see Maduro as the legitimate chief of Venezuela but as the chief of a drug cartel. Rubio has always represented Venezuela as a vestige of communist ideology in the Western hemisphere.

“We will not have a cartel, operating or pretending to be a government, operating in our own hemisphere,” said Rubio.

After the first military strike on a boat carrying drugs in Venezuela, the American chief diplomat said that Trump “was going to use the American army and all the elements of the American power to target the cartels that aim for America”.

AP and others reported that the boat had turned around and returned to the ground when it was struck. But Rubio said on Monday that he didn’t know if it was correct.

“What should start is that some of these boats must explode,” said Rubio. “We cannot live in a world where all of a sudden they go in common and therefore we can no longer touch them.”

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The writers of the AP Matthew Lee in Jerusalem and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed the reports.