The U.S. military says it has taken out a boat carrying drugs from Venezuela, a move that’s likely to fuel already high tensions between Washington and Caracas.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the strike on Tuesday, calling it a “lethal strike” in the southern Caribbean Sea. He said the vessel had left Venezuela and was being run by a group the U.S. considers a narco-terrorist organization.
President Trump also mentioned the operation earlier in the day during an unrelated Oval Office event, telling reporters that the military had “shot out” the boat just moments before. He said Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine briefed him on the strike.
So far, details about who exactly was operating the vessel or how the strike unfolded remain unclear.
This comes just weeks after the U.S. Navy ramped up its presence near Venezuela, sending three warships to the region in what officials called an anti-drug cartel mission. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro slammed the deployment at the time, calling it an “extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal” show of force.
The Trump administration has long accused Maduro’s government of partnering with drug cartels to funnel narcotics into the United States—a charge Maduro has consistently denied. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, Wikimedia commons.
