The U.S. military executed a deadly strike on a vessel, reportedly transporting narcotics, in the Caribbean after departing Venezuela, as announced by President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
During a statement at the White House on Tuesday, Trump noted that the U.S. had “literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, with a lot of drugs on it.”
“There are numerous drugs entering our country, and this has been happening for a long time. These particular ones originated from Venezuela. We’ve been seeing a heavy flow of such activities from Venezuela. So, we neutralized it,” Trump stated on Tuesday.
Rubio corroborated the military action on social platform X, indicating that the “lethal” strike targeted a “drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela” and was managed by a known narco-terrorist organization.
An anonymous senior U.S. defense official reported to The Hill on Tuesday, verifying that the U.S. military executed a “precision strike” on the vessel and that additional details will be “disclosed in the future.”
This strike occurs amid efforts by the administration to enhance its naval presence in the Caribbean to counter threats from Latin American drug cartels. Recently, the U.S. dispatched at least seven ships, a nuclear-powered submarine, and more than 4,500 Marines near Venezuela.
The deployment was slammed by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who called it “an extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal and bloody threat.”
“In the face of this maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum preparedness for the defense of Venezuela,” Maduro said at a press conference on Monday.
The administration has not signaled that it is preparing a land invasion in Venezuela.
Maduro has ordered some 15,000 troops to the border of Colombia, its neighbor, to combat drug trafficking.
The administration has billed the deployment of ships and personnel as an anti-drug trafficking operation, which has gotten backing from Guyana, Venezuela’s neighbor. Trump has accused the Latin American drug cartels of bolstering the flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S.
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously said that Trump is “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”
The USS Gravely and the USS Jason Dunham, two Aegis guided-missile destroyers, are already in the Caribbean, a U.S. defense official told The Associated Press.
Maduro warned Monday that the administration’s operation in Venezuela will “stain” Trump’s “hands with blood.”
Last updated at 4:28 p.m. EDT
