By Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States had attacked a vessel he said was carrying drugs in the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility, the latest U.S. strike in the region.
The latest strike – at least the third against alleged drug vessels – comes amid a large U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean. Five F-35 aircraft were seen landing in Puerto Rico on Saturday after the Trump administration ordered 10 of the stealth fighters to join the buildup.
In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said the Pentagon carried out the strike on his orders, killing “3 male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel.”
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is the U.S. military’s combatant command that encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean.
Trump did not provide evidence but did post a minute-long aerial video that showed two side-by-side videos of a vessel, one in color and one in black and white, as it moved through the water. About halfway through, the vessel appears to be struck by at least one projectile and then explodes. The video ends with a single aerial angle of the vessel on fire in the water.
Trump did not say where the vessel departed from or where specifically the strike took place.
In addition to the F-35s, there are at least seven U.S. warships in the region, as well as one nuclear-powered submarine.
The U.S. military carried out a strike earlier this week in the Southern Caribbean that targeted an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel vessel heading to the United States.
“UNLAWFUL, EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS”?
The Trump administration has provided scant information about the first two strikes, despite demands from U.S. lawmakers that the government justify the action. Trump said the first strike, on September 2, struck a vessel allegedly carrying members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The Venezuelan government, which says it has deployed tens of thousands of troops to fight drug trafficking and defend the country, has said none of the people killed in the first strike belonged to Tren de Aragua.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly alleged the U.S. is hoping to drive him from power. Washington last month doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, accusing him of links to drug trafficking and criminal groups, which Maduro denies.
Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told sailors and Marines on a warship off Puerto Rico that they were not deployed to the Caribbean for training, but instead had been sent to the “front lines” of a critical counter-narcotics mission.
The decision to blow up a suspected drug vessel instead of seizing it and apprehending the crew is highly unusual.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the power to declare war belongs to Congress, but the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and presidents of both parties have conducted military strikes overseas without congressional approval.
Experts and human rights advocates have questioned the legality of the strikes.
Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch said the strikes against the alleged drug boats were “unlawful extrajudicial killings.”
“U.S. officials cannot summarily kill people they accuse of smuggling drugs,” Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
“The problem of narcotics entering the United States is not an armed conflict, and U.S. officials cannot circumvent their human rights obligations by pretending otherwise,” Yager said.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Kanishka Singh in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Leslie Adler and William Mallard)
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