Bernd Debusmann JrBBC News, White House
Donald Trump/Truth SocialPresident Donald Trump says the US has carried out a strike against a drug-carrying vessel in the southern Caribbean, killing 11 “narcoterrorists”.
He posted on social media that Tuesday’s US military operation had targeted members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Trump said the vessel was in international waters and was transporting illegal narcotics bound for the US.
The Trump administration has ratcheted up military and political pressure against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in recent weeks, including through a $50m (£37m) reward for information leading to his arrest on drug-trafficking charges. Maduro has vowed Venezuela would fight any attempted US military intervention.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said that US forces had “shot out” a “drug-carrying boat” in the vicinity of Venezuela.
“A lot of drugs in that boat,” he said.
Trump added he had been briefed on the incident by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine.
Later the president posted on his Truth Social platform: “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility.”
He added: “The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. 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. BEWARE!”
His post was accompanied by a grainy aerial video showing a motor boat speeding across choppy waters before it bursts into flames.
In a social media post, Venezuela’s communications minister, Freddy Ñáñez, suggested, without evidence, that the video shared by Trump was created with artificial intelligence.
The Reuters news agency wrote that its initial checks on the video had not revealed any signs of manipulation, but that its verification process was ongoing.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X that “today the US military conducted a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organisation”.
It is so far unclear what drugs the vessel was believed to have been carrying.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has designated several drug-trafficking organisations and criminal groups in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America as terrorist organisations.
He has used allegations of criminality as a justification for deporting Venezuelans. He did, however, suffer a blow late on Tuesday when a US appeals court ruled that he could not invoke an 18th-Century wartime law to speed up these removals.
As well as Tren de Aragua, Trump has taken aim at the Cartel of the Suns – a group that the US alleges is headed by Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials, some drawn from the country’s military or intelligence services.
The US military has moved to bolster its forces in the southern Caribbean over the last two months, including through the deployment of additional naval vessels and thousands of US Marines and sailors.
The Trump administration has repeatedly signalled a willingness to use force to stem the flow of drugs into the US. “There’s more where that came from,” Trump said of the strike on the vessel.
Venezuela’s government has reacted angrily to the deployments.
On Monday, for example, Maduro vowed to “declare a republic in arms” if the US attacked, adding that the US deployments were “the greatest threat that has been seen on our continent in the last 100 years”.
In at least one other respect, Trump has taken a softer stance towards Venezuela – by reportedly allowing US company Chevron to work within the country in partnership with the country’s state-run PDVSA oil firm.
