WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that he ordered another strike on a small boat he accused of carrying drugs in the waters off Venezuela, expanding what the Trump administration has declared is an \u201carmed conflict\u201d with cartels.<\/p>\n
In a post on social media, Hegseth asserted that the \u201cvessel was trafficking narcotics\u201d and those aboard were \u201cnarco-terrorists.\u201d He said the strike killed four men but offered no details on who they were or what group they belonged to, following the US designation of several Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump said in his own social media post that the boat was \u201cloaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE\u201d and implied it was \u201centering American Territory\u201d while off the coast of Venezuela.<\/p>\n
It is the fourth deadly strike in the Caribbean and the latest since revelations that Trump told lawmakers he was treating drug traffickers as unlawful combatants and military force was required to combat them. That assertion of presidential war powers sets the stage for expanded action and raises questions about how far the administration will go without sign-off from Congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlowing them up without knowing who\u2019s on the boat is a terrible policy, and it should end,\u201d said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a consistent and harsh critic of the US strikes.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration laid out its justification for the strikes in a memo obtained by The Associated Press this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe President determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,\u201d according to the memo sent to Congress. Trump directed the Pentagon to \u201cconduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict,\u201d the document says.<\/p>\n
Sen. Jim Risch, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the president had the authority to go after the cartels without further authorization from Congress under \u201chis general powers under the Constitution as the commander in chief.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat could be a bigger defense of this country than keeping out this poison that\u2019s killing thousands of Americans every year?\u201d Risch said Friday.<\/p>\n
Paul said only Congress has the authority to declare war and characterized the memo as \u201ca way to pretend like\u201d the administration is notifying lawmakers with a justification for the strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they want to declare war, come to Congress and say they want to declare war,\u201d he told the AP. \u201cBut you can\u2019t just say it yourself and say, Oh, well, we sent them a note and now we\u2019re at war with unnamed people who we won\u2019t even identify before we kill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours after Hegseth announced the latest strike, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez said the \u201cwarlike aggression\u201d by the US affects the greater Caribbean, not just Venezuela.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see it and feel it, as they murder our countries\u2019 citizens in summary extrajudicial executions,\u201d she said during a conference in Venezuela\u2019s capital, Caracas, focused on colonialism in the West.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro did not explicitly mention the strikes, but he told conference attendees that his country is ready to defend itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cVenezuela has the right to peace, to sovereignty, to existence, and no empire in this world can take it away,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if it is necessary to move from an unarmed struggle to an armed struggle, this people will do so. \u2026 Colonialism no more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a leftist leader who has clashed with the Trump administration, accused the US of committing \u201cmurder\u201d and urged the victims\u2019 families to \u201cjoin forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no narco-terrorists on the boats,\u201d he posted on X after the strike was announced. \u201cDrug traffickers live in the US, Europe and Dubai. On that boat are poor Caribbean youth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Video of Friday\u2019s strike posted online showed a small boat moving in open water when it suddenly explodes, with water splashing all around it. As the smoke from the explosion clears, the boat is visible, consumed with flames, floating motionless on the water.<\/p>\n
With it, at least three of the strikes have now been carried out on vessels that US officials said had originated from Venezuela. The strikes followed a buildup of US maritime forces in the Caribbean unlike any seen in recent times.<\/p>\n
The Navy\u2019s presence in the region \u2014 eight warships with over 5,000 sailors and Marines \u2014 has been pretty stable for weeks, according to two defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.<\/p>\n
In a post about the first strike last month, Trump claimed the vessel was carrying members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Posts about all the subsequent strikes, including Friday\u2019s, have not provided any details about what organizations have been targeted. The four strikes have killed 21 people, the administration says.<\/p>\n
Pentagon officials who briefed senators on the strikes this week could not provide a list of the designated terrorist organizations at the center of the conflict.<\/p>\n
Officials in the Pentagon, when asked for more details about the strike, referred The Associated Press back to Hegseth\u2019s post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that he ordered another strike on a small boat he accused of carrying drugs in the waters off Venezuela, expanding what the Trump administration has declared is an \u201carmed conflict\u201d with cartels. In a post on social media, Hegseth asserted that the \u201cvessel was trafficking narcotics\u201d and those …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87741,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87726\/revisions\/87741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}