The United States is planning military strikes in Venezuela against drug cartels in the coming weeks.
Donald Trump is yet to approve the actions which are in response to President Nicolas Maduro, whom the U.S. sees as illegitimate, not doing enough to stop illegal drugs from getting out of Venezuela.
It would largely consist of drone strikes against leaders and members of gangs, as well as drug labs, NBC News reports.
They follow a recent lethal strike on a vessel allegedly affiliated with a terrorist organization ‘trafficking illicit narcotics’.
The attack killed ‘three male narcoterrorists’ took place in the US Southern Command’s area of responsibility, the president said.
Trump administration officials expressed disappointment that the move and any of the recent military escalations do not appear to have weakened Maduro.
They’re also wary about further attacks after the backlash to the Venezuelan boat bomb.
The White House referred to Trump’s prior comments on the matter: ‘We’ll see what happens. Venezuela is sending us their gang members, their drug dealers and drugs. It’s not acceptable.’
The United States is planning military strikes in Venezuela against drug cartels in the coming weeks
The Daily Mail has reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
Last week, Trump announced that he had ordered a lethal strike on a vessel allegedly affiliated with a terrorist organization ‘trafficking illicit narcotics’.
The attack killed ‘three male narcoterrorists’ took place in the US Southern Command’s area of responsibility, the president said.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: ‘On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility.’
He attached a video showing the vessel speeding through a body of water before suddenly being struck and bursting into flames.
‘Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans,’ Trump added in his Friday evening post.
‘The strike killed 3 male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel, which was in international waters.’
The US Southern Command’s area of responsibility covers 31 countries and includes the land mass of Latin America, the south of Mexico, the waters adjacent to Central and South America and the Caribbean Sea.
Trump said that no US forces were harmed in the strike.
He issued a warning: ‘STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS!!!’
The attack was the third US strike targeting alleged drug boats – and the second one announced by Trump this week.
On September 2, Trump said on his social media platform that a US strike had killed 11 ‘positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists.’
The US president then posted on September 15 that a second strike had ‘resulted in 3 male terrorists killed in action.’
Trump said that the strike occurred while ‘these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics’ and headed to the US.
He added: ‘BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!
‘The illicit activities by these cartels have wrought DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES ON AMERICAN COMMUNITIES FOR DECADES, killing millions of American Citizens. NO LONGER. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!’
In February, the Trump administration designated international cartels like Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and Cártel de Sinaloa as terrorist organizations.
Trump’s announcement of a third strike on Friday came as Venezuela accused the US of waging an ‘undeclared war’ in the Caribbean.
Venezuelan attorney general Tarek William Saab claimed that ‘the use of missiles and nuclear weapons to murder defenseless fishermen on a small boat are crimes against humanity that must be investigated by the UN.’
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro – whom the United States does not recognize as legitimate – has urged citizens to join militia training.
He accused the US of hatching ‘an imperial plan for regime change and to impose a US puppet government’ to ‘come and steal our oil’.
The Trump administration has issued a $50 million bounty on Maduro, accusing him of ‘violating US narcotics laws’ and being a leader of Cartel de los Soles.
In July, the US Department of the Treasury sanctioned the Cartel de los Soles, alleging it was a ‘Venezuela-based criminal group’ headed by Maduro and associates in his government.
FBI director Kash Patel has compared the Trump administration’s approach to illegal drug smuggling to how terrorist organizations were treated following 9/11.
‘Whether that’s in a kill operation, a capture operation, a surrender operation, or a host nation takedown, like we did with the counterterrorism mission sets in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan and elsewhere, we are applying that to the drug traffickers in Mexico and Venezuela and Colombia,’ he said.
