The United States announces a new attack on the coast of Venezuela against a boat that accuses drug trafficking | International

The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh, reported this Friday in his X account of a new attack against a boat that supposedly transported drugs with four crew members on board. The American army killed them, according to the head of the Pentagon, in the Caribbean waters, “against the coast of Venezuela.” This is the quarter of this type since the United States began in early September with these extrajudicial military operations, for which the authorities have not requested prior authorization to Congress.

This time, the announcement did not, as on previous occasions, Donald Trump, although Hegseth says in his Post that the orders left the president. Also, that the boat belonged to one of the “designated terrorist organizations” by the State – List Department in which Washington included in February the Aragua Train, a criminal band of Venezuelan origin – and that sailed in the “area of ​​responsibility of the southern command of the United States.” He offered no more evidence of those statements than a video in which the time of impact is seen. Also are almost all the details of the previous operations.

According to the head of the Pentagon, “four narcoterrorist” traveled “on board” and “died in the attack.” “The ship transported substantial amounts of narcotics to the United States to poison” to the “people” of the United States, continues the message of Hegseth, which signs as “secretary of war” and links the military operation with the worst public health crisis related to drug use in the history of the United States. “These attacks will continue until the attacks against the American people end!”, The Secretary of Defense also warns.

A few minutes later, Trump reproduced on his social network, Truth, the same video broadcast by Hegseth, in which the moment is seen when the boat jumps through the air. He also said that “he was loaded with enough drugs to kill between 25,000 and 50,000 people.” Again, he did not give evidence of it.

The attack revealed by Hegseth comes after this Thursday the American media reported the sending of a letter to the United States Congress. In it, Trump communicated that the country has entered a “non -international” war with drug cartels, whose members consider “illegal combatants.”

The memorandum followed the extrajudicial attacks that sank at least three boats in the last month (Trump has spoken of four, but everything indicates that he did it twice from it). All of them, supposedly, transported drugs in International Waters of the Caribbean. In those operations, the United States Army killed at least 17 people, to whom you have to add the four killed in the last attack. A group of Democratic senators had demanded from the White House in a letter explanations about the legality of the attacks and reminded him that Congress must give permission to the President to authorize them, in accordance with the US law that regulates the powers in times of war.

Increase tension

The news of the existence of that document coincided on Thursday, while the tension grew in Washington and Caracas, with the complaint of the Venezuelan Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino López, of the presence of five United States combat planes flying over Venezuela, north of the central coast of the Caribbean country. Washington already ordered last month the deployment of eight military ships and a submarine in the Caribbean Sea, with that argument to combat drug trafficking.

“It is a provocation, a great threat against the security of the nation,” said the general on the detection of airplanes, among which he said there were “f-35 fighters,” he does not intimidate us, “he added.

The White House accuses the Government of Nicolás Maduro to lead a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking, and these weeks has ruled the idea among analysts in Washington that Trump could take advantage of the situation to force, with the decided thrust of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, a change of regime in Venezuela.

In the last hours of Thursday, the tension against a possible attack on Venezuelan soil grew in Caracas. Also, the doubts of whether those threats will only be a pressure to force to negotiate an exit to the Chavista government, with which Trump has been on a war footing since his arrival for the second time to the White House agreed. In a television intervention, Maduro declared this Thursday, placing himself on the fund of other countries intervened by the United States in recent decades: “There are people who think that hurting their country favors themselves (themselves).” How were Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, after foreign aggressions? “

In an armed conflict, a nation can attack the soldiers of another country even if they are not in combat. You can also stop them and you can submit them to military trials. By characterizing the campaign against posters as a war, the Trump administration claims extraordinary powers of that exceptional time to justify attacks against boats in the Caribbean. A majority of human rights experts and organizations consider those illegal attacks.

The White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, defended in her appearance before the Friday’s press that Trump is not counting for this offensive with Congress. And he warned that this “has been very clear from the electoral campaign,” during which “promised the American people to eradicate the drug epidemic.”