US Secretary of Defence and Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth said, As many as six people were killed in a strike on an alleged drug Cartel boat in the Caribbean Sea.
This is the 10th such attack in a span of two months; what Hegseth described is a part of broader anti-narcotics operations across the Pacific and Caribbean waters, claims that both Venezuela and Colombia deny.
In his post on X, Hegseth wrote, 'The Department of War carried out a "lethal kinetic strike" on a Tren de Aragua (TDA) vessel in neutral waters.' TDA is a transnational criminal organisation based in Venezuela. Hegseth warned Narco terrorist smuggling drugs, saying, “If you dare to bring drugs into our hemisphere, we will kill you without a second thought and treat you exactly the way we treat Al-Qaeda.”
He said, “We promise we will eliminate these drug cartels and hunt them down wherever they are.” Earlier on Friday, Trump touted what he called "great success" in the US military’s effort against the alleged Venezuelan “drug boats”, claiming that the flow of narcotics coming in by sea has fallen to “like 5 per cent of what they were a year ago”.
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He hinted at carrying out “land attacks” on the Venezuelan drug cartel without providing additional details on when and where the US attack would unfold inside the country.
Both Caracas and Bogotá have argued that the US operations in the region are the beginning of an attempted resource grab, rather than a counter-smuggling effort.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has constantly accused the US of seeking a regime in the country under the guise of these so-called anti-drug operations. He alleged that Washington was interested in the Latin American country’s vast energy and mineral reserves.
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