President Donald Trump has announced that the United States military conducted a “kinetic” strike on a small boat he accused of smuggling drugs out of Venezuela for the Tren de Aragua gang.
In a Tuesday post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump shared black-and-white aerial footage of the bombing, which reportedly killed 11 people.
“The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike,” Trump wrote. “Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”
The bombing took place early on Tuesday morning, according to the president. It marks a significant escalation in tensions with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom Trump has repeatedly accused — without evidence — of orchestrating transnational gang activity.
Trump first revealed that the attack had occurred during an Oval Office news conference on Tuesday afternoon.
In an apparently spontaneous moment, Trump pivoted from an announcement about the new headquarters for US Space Command to break the news.
“When you come out and when you leave the room, you’ll see that we just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat,” Trump told reporters in the room, as he stood at a podium surrounded by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.
“A lot of drugs in that boat. And you’ll be seeing that, and you’ll be reading about that,” Trump continued, later adding: “These came out of Venezuela.”
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The incident is the first known military strike the US has taken against alleged drug smugglers since the Trump administration began increasing military presence in the Caribbean last month.
Few details have emerged so far about the strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on social media that the strike had occurred in the “southern Caribbean”, but no clearer location has been given.
Trump identified the people on board the boat as “narcoterrorists” who were “at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States”.
[Aljazeera]
