Washington | President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the US has carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela and was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.
The president said 11 were killed in the operation.
“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States,” Trump said in a social media posting. “No US Forces were harmed in this strike. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier on X that the vessel was being operated by a “designated narco-terrorist organization.” He described the operation as a lethal strike.
Rubio addressed the strike on Tuesday shortly before he was scheduled to depart for Mexico and Ecuador for talks on drug cartels, security, tariffs and more.
The US recently announced plans to boost its maritime force in the waters off Venezuela to combat threats from Latin American drug cartels.
The US has not signaled any planned land incursion by the thousands of personnel being deployed. Still, President Nicolás Maduro's government has responded by deploying troops along Venezuela's coast and border with neighboring Colombia, as well as by urging Venezuelans to enlist in a civilian militia.
Maduro has insisted that the US is building a false drug-trafficking narrative to try to force him out of office. He and other government officials have repeatedly cited a United Nations report that they say shows traffickers attempt to move only 5% of the cocaine produced in Colombia through Venezuela. Landlocked Bolivia and Colombia, with access to the Pacific and Caribbean, are the world's top cocaine producers.
The latest U.N. World Drug Report shows that various countries in South America, including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, reported larger cocaine seizures in 2022 than in 2021, but it does not assign Venezuela the outsize role that the White House has in recent months.
“The impact of increased cocaine trafficking has been felt in Ecuador in particular, which has seen a wave of lethal violence in recent years linked to both local and transnational crime groups, most notably from Mexico and the Balkan countries,” according to the report.
Maduro on Monday told reporters he “would constitutionally declare a republic in arms” if his country were attacked by US forces deployed to the Caribbean.
The press office of Venezuela's government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's announcement.
The Pentagon did not offer any immediate comment on the reported incident.
