The attack Tuesday killed two people aboard the vessel, Hegseth said, bringing the death toll from the Trump administration’s campaign in South American waters up to at least 66 people in at least 16 strikes.
President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by saying the United States is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and claiming the boats are operated by foreign terror organizations. The administration has not provided evidence or more details. “We will find and terminate EVERY vessel with the intention of trafficking drugs to America to poison our citizens,” Hegseth posted while on a trip to Asia.
Lawmakers from both parties have pressed the Trump administration for more information on who is being targeted and the legal justification for the strikes given that Congress has not authorized military action. United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk last week called for the U.S. to halt the attacks and “prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.”
The latest strike comes as the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has left the Mediterranean Sea on its way to the Caribbean after Hegseth ordered it to the region more than a week ago. It will join an already robust buildup of American planes, ships and thousands of troops in Latin America. A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ship movements, confirmed that the Ford and the destroyer USS Bainbridge crossed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic on Tuesday. The Ford originally deployed with five destroyers, but it’s not clear if all of them will go to the Caribbean. Two of the other destroyers in the Ford’s strike group, the USS Winston Churchill and the USS Mahan, are in the Mediterranean now, with the Mahan in port at Rota, Spain.
The other two destroyers, the USS Forrest Sherman and the USS Mitchener, are in the Red Sea, the official said.
With the strikes and military assets in the region expanding, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States, has said the U.S. government is “fabricating” a war against him.
During a interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump was asked if the U.S. was going to war with Venezuela. He responded: “I doubt it. I don’t think so. But they’ve been treating us very badly, not only on drugs.”
Norah O’Donnell, in the interview conducted Friday, also asked Trump if Maduro’s days were numbered.
“I would say yeah. I think so, yeah,” the president said. Trump would not say whether or not he would order land strikes in Venezuela.
In the latest strike, a video Hegseth posted to social media has a gray box obscuring a boat that appears in the water before it’s blown up. The footage then cuts to the vessel engulfed by flames.
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