7th US boat strike

The United States has confirmed a seventh strike in the southern Caribbean, killing three more alleged “narco-terrorists”, bringing the total death toll of the US military’s lethal boat strikes since September to 32. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted on his X account yesterday that on Friday, under the direction of US President Donald Trump, the Department of War conducted the strike on a vessel it claims is associated with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a Colombian far-left guerrilla insurgency group. Hegseth claimed the vessel was known by US intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling and was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics. The strike was conducted in international waters, he said. He compared the cartel to the militant terrorist organisation Al Qaeda, which he claimed uses violence, murder, and terrorism to impose its will, threatening the US’ national security. “The United States military will treat these organisations like the terrorists they are — they will be hunted and killed, just like Al Qaeda,” he said. Hegseth’s announcement comes shortly after Trump referred to Colombian President Gustavo Petro as an illegal drug leader and said that the US would be cutting its funding to that country. He claimed that Petro, who has publicly voiced his dissent for the US boat strikes in the Caribbean, was encouraging massive production of drugs in fields “all over Colombia.” “It has become the biggest business in Colombia by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large-scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long-term rip-off of America,” Trump wrote in a post to his Truth Social platform. Trump said that as of Sunday, payments or subsidies would no longer be sent to Colombia, though he offered no further details on what these payments entailed. “The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc. Petro, a low-rated and very unpopular leader with a fresh mouth toward America, better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him — and it won’t be done nicely,” Trump wrote. Innocent man killed In a tweet on Saturday night, Petro referenced a Colombian media report claiming that the US had killed an innocent man in a previous boat strike. An RTVC report published on Saturday quotes the relative of 40-year-old fisherman Alejandro Carranza, who she says is one of more than 30 people killed in US boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea thus far. Carranza’s cousin, Autenis Manjarres, identified the vessel depicted in a September 15 strike confirmed by the US, which killed three. She said that family members had seen the footage and believed the vessel was Carranza’s, and that it was in distress at the time of the strike. “We are the descendants of fishing families, and well, he was there because he was a curious person, and he was there with the engines. They had broken down, and it’s just not fair that they were bombed like that. He was an innocent man who just went out to earn daily bread, so what we’re living through isn’t fair,” she said in the report. Of the report, Petro tweeted, “The USA has invaded national territory with a missile fired to kill a humble fisherman and has destroyed his family, his children… The USA offended the national territory of Colombia and killed an honest, hard-working Colombian.” On Saturday, Trump had also confirmed that a large drug-carrying submarine had been destroyed by the US military as part of its efforts to curb drug trafficking in the region, killing at least two. Two deemed by Trump as “narco-terrorists” survived the US strike — the first known survivors of lethal operations carried out by the US in the Caribbean Sea since September 2. Two others on board did not. One of the survivors, he claimed was being repatriated to Colombia, and the other to Ecuador, Petro condemns strikes Petro on Friday condemned the deaths of the two Las Cuevas fishermen and doubled down on previous claims that a Colombian had been killed in one of the US’ six confirmed boat strikes. While attending a public meeting at the Casa de Nariño in Colombia on Friday, Petro called the killings a war crime and an international aggression. “We already know that two fishermen in Trinidad Tobago were killed by a missile. This is a war crime. This is an international aggression against a zone of peace, the Caribbean. This It is an aggression against national sovereignty of the Latin American peoples…” he said. He added that if US officials were involved in the killing of a Colombian civilian, they should be tried in Colombia. One day prior in an interview with Colombian media RTVC Noticias, the official news programme of Colombia’s public media system, Petro had also mentioned the Trinidadians killed and pushed back on the US claim that its military presence in the Caribbean was part of a counter-trafficking effort. He claimed the US presence was centred on Venezuela’s oil and resource wealth and not combating drug trafficking in the region, as it has claimed. “This year we’ve seized 34 tonnes of cocaine and not a single death. The United States may have seized three tons and there are already 27 deaths—possibly Trinidadians, we know that; Colombians, we’re not sure yet; maybe Venezuelans. 27 dead for three tonnes, while Colombia has shown it can seize 34 tons without a single death. I think our total seizures are nearing a thousand tons. So obviously, this isn’t really about drugs. It’s about oil. That’s what I call the economy of death, the intensive use of oil.” Petro had previously called on Trinidad’s government to search for the bodies of the deceased in the aftermath of the first US strike on September 2 which killed 11.