President Trump said Monday that the U.S. had carried out another military strike targeting what he said were "confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela" in international waters, further escalating his war on drug traffickers.
"This morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility," Trump posted on Truth Social, along with an accompanying video of a military strike targeting a boat floating on the water.
Trump asserted the boat was transporting illegal drugs "headed to the U.S." The strike killed three individuals, Trump said, and no U.S. forces were harmed.
"Be warned — if you are transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you!" Trump posted.
The Trump administration earlier this month carried out a similar strike targeting what it said was a drug vessel in the Caribbean that the president said was carrying members of the Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang from Venezuela that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization. That strike killed 11 people on board.
The deadly strike raised questions about the government's authority to carry out strikes at sea, and it has prompted pushback from even some Republicans who have questioned the legal justification for the approach.
“Maybe [the boat] was coming here. Maybe it wasn’t. But nobody’s even asking whether we need to prove that. We just blow them up,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told reporters after the first strike.
Source: The Hill - News
