The US military on Monday bombed a boat near Venezuela and killed three people, according to a statement released by President Trump on Truth Social.
President Trump claimed without providing evidence that the boat was carrying drugs and that the three people who were killed were “narcoterrorists.” He made similar claims about the first US military strike on a boat near Venezuela that occurred on September 2, which he said killed 11 “narcoterrorists.”
The president also posted a video that purported to show the Monday strike. It showed what appeared to be a boat that was drifting at sea, followed by an explosion.
“This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said. “The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US.”
The president also signaled that more US strikes on boats in the region were coming. “BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” he wrote.
The second US bombing in the region came after the Venezuelan government said that personnel from a US warship boarded a Venezuelan tuna boat that was in Venezuelan waters. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said 18 armed US troops were on the vessel for 18 hours, a claim that hasn’t been confirmed by the US military.
“Those who give the order to carry out such provocations are seeking an incident that would justify a military escalation in the Caribbean,” Gil said.
While Trump and other US officials claim the military action and pressure on Venezuela’s government is about drug trafficking and a response to overdose deaths in the US, fentanyl doesn’t come from or through Venezuela, and the majority of the cocaine that is transported to the US comes through the Pacific, not the Caribbean. Gil said that the real purpose of the US operations was for the US to “persist in their failed policy” of regime change in Venezuela.
The Venezuela policy is being largely driven by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long pushed for regime change in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday called out Rubio in response to the US boarding the tuna boat, calling him a “lord of death and war.”