(AFP) – President Donald Trump said Tuesday that US forces had attacked a boat carrying drugs from Venezuela and “took it out,” in a potentially significant escalation in the standoff between Caracas and Washington. The United States accuses President Nicolas Maduro of heading a drug cartel and has deployed warships to the southern Caribbean in what it has billed as a bid to combat trafficking, while the Venezuelan leader has cast the deployment as a threat to the country.
US forces “shot out a boat…, a drug carrying boat, lots of drugs in that boat,” Trump said in the White House, without providing further details on the operation or the circumstances surrounding it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio meanwhile posted on X that the “US military conducted a lethal strike… against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization,” but gave no additional information.
A senior defense official confirmed those details and said that more information on the “precision strike” would “be made available at a later time.” The announcement of the strike followed days of mounting tension between Washington and Caracas, with Maduro declaring a state of “maximum readiness” to defend against what he says are US military threats.
Maduro has been in Trump’s crosshairs since the Republican’s first term from 2017 to 2021, but the US president’s policy of maximum pressure, including an oil embargo, has failed to dislodge the Venezuelan leader from power. Washington has doubled to $50 million a bounty for the capture of Maduro, whose re-election in 2024 and 2018 were not recognized by the United States or much of the international community amid allegations of fraud and voter oppression.
Analysts have told AFP that the deployment of the US warships was likely aimed at ramping up pressure on Maduro, who has repeatedly accused Trump of attempting to bring about regime change. Last week, Caracas petitioned the United Nations to intervene in the dispute by demanding “the immediate cessation of the US military deployment in the Caribbean.” And on Monday, Maduro said Venezuela was prepared for “a period of armed struggle in defense of the national territory” in case of an attack.
© 2024 AFP
