Washington – President Donald Trump said Monday that the US army had carried out a strike in a second Venezuelan boat, claiming that the ship was led by “narcoterrorist” and transporting “illegal narcotics” addressed to the United States.
Trump said the strike killed three people, whom he called “male terrorists”, and that US forces were not damaged. There was almost two weeks after the United States exploded a boat in front of Venezuela, killing 11 people, with Trump saying that the ship carried drugs and operated on the train gang of Aragua.
Trump announced the social truth on Monday, adding a brief video of a ship that was flames. He wrote that people who transport drugs that can kill Americans should take it as a warning, adding: “We are hunting you!”
Asked by a journalist on Monday at the Oval office if he planned to provide evidence that the second ship wore narco -terrorist, Trump indicated that the video supported his argument.
“Well, we have evidence. All you have to do is look at the burden that was, as, dotted throughout the ocean, large bags of cocaine and fentanyl throughout the place, and it was also registered evidence that they were leaving,” Trump said.
Venezuelan government officials did not specifically refer to the second strike on Monday, but Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, said in a televised press conference on state media after Trump’s announcement that the United States was deliberately causing Venezuela. He added that the relations between the two countries had collapsed, and blamed the United States.
“Some expect us to fall into the provocations that the United States deliberately generates an open military confrontation,” Cabello said.
The Venezuelan government has argued that the boat directed earlier this month was a fishing vessel. A day after that strike, Trump threatened with a greater escalation, telling journalists that “Venezuela has been a very bad actor.”
The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, had promised one day before that strike to declare a “Republic of Arms” to his country if he were attacked by the US forces.
A source familiar with the first strike told NBC News at that time that the objective of the United States government was to press Maduro to make hasty decisions that could lead to his expulsion, without the deployment of US troops within the country.
The Trump administration has exerted renewed pressure on Venezuela, which leads to tensions between the two countries. The State Department this year appointed eight posters of drugs and criminal organizations as “global terrorists”, which gave the government a new legal authority to take military measures against them.
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Hard Alineator in Venezuela, said in an interview last month that the designation caused the groups to deal with a “national security problem.”
After the strike on Monday, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh, published the video of the explosion again and said that “drug traffments are the enemies of the United States.”
“We will not stop at all to defend our homeland and our citizens,” Hegseth said in X. “We will track them, we will kill them and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere, in the times and places of our choice.”
