Trump says US military sank three Venezuela-linked drug-smuggling boats

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning said that the US military had sunk three suspected drug-smuggling vessels originating from Venezuela.

“We knocked off, actually, three boats, not two, but you saw two,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn as he prepared to leave for a state visit to London. “And the problem is there are very few boats out in the water. There’s not a lot of boats out in the water. I can’t imagine why,” he added.

The president also urged Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to “stop sending Tren de Aragua into the United States, stop sending drugs into the United States,” and “stop sending people from your prisons into our country.”

Trump’s remarks followed his September 3 announcement that a US strike on a suspected drug boat linked to the Venezuelan cartel ‘Tren de Aragua’ had killed 11 people.

“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA was a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere,” Trump had said in a post on Truth Social.

“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!” he added.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the “lethal strike” as having taken place in the “southern Caribbean” targeting “a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela.”

“As the President of the US had just announced moments ago, today the U.S. 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,” Rubio said in a post on X.

The State Department had designated Tren de Aragua, which originated in Venezuela, as a foreign terrorist organisation and specially designated global terrorists in February, as per CNN.

The US had deployed a large number of military assets around the Caribbean and Latin America, drawing strong criticism from Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. (ANI)