US navy strikes one other boat it claims was carrying medication as Trump works to extend stress on Venezuela | EUROtoday

The U.S. navy struck one other alleged drug-trafficking vessel within the japanese Pacific Ocean on Monday, the Pentagon introduced, because the Trump administration’s marketing campaign towards Venezuela and alleged drug traffickers within the area intensifies.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” U.S. Southern Command wrote on X. “Two male narco-terrorists were killed. No U.S. military forces were harmed.”

In the grainy black-and-white video, a navy plane seems to focus on a low-slung automobile within the sea beneath, which then explodes.

In its announcement, the navy didn’t embrace proof to confirm its claims.

The strike was the thirtieth such assault since September, and it brings the entire variety of recognized casualties to 107, based on the Associated Press.

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Last week, the president disclosed what could the primary recognized land strike in his marketing campaign. When requested about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump described a Christmas Eve assault on an alleged drug facility.

“We just knocked out, I don’t know if you read or you saw, they have a big plant or a big facility…where the ships come from,” the president stated Friday throughout an interview with speak radio host John Catsimatidis. “Two nights ago we knocked that out, so we hit them very hard.”

The feedback seem to match particulars in a CNN report about an alleged CIA drone strike towards a port facility on a distant a part of the Venezuelan coast. The authorities believes the power is utilized by the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang as a part of its drug distribution efforts, sources conversant in the alleged strike informed CNN.

The alleged assault hit an empty facility and didn’t end in any casualties, the sources stated. The CIA has not acknowledged any such strike.

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The president has lengthy urged a wider land marketing campaign towards Venezuela may happen.

“I think you’re going to find that this is war,” Trump stated in early December. “And very soon we’re going to start doing it on land too.”

Also this month, the Trump administration started seizing sanctioned oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, a nation which the White House accuses of being in league with traffickers. (Venezuela denies this, and its National Assembly voted this month to criminalize the seizures.)

The president has additionally reportedly approved the CIA to undertake covert operations contained in the nation.

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Venezuela has accused the president of utilizing the strikes as a pretext to power Maduro from energy.

But home critics of Trump allege that the killings are battle crimes towards noncombatants, whereas the Trump administration insists the strikes are justified as a result of it claims the U.S. is in an armed battle with drug teams.

The administration additional angered critics when the Pentagon introduced this month wouldn’t launch the complete video of a strike during which the navy allegedly killed two survivors of an preliminary assault.