U.S. military forces have launched a strike against a second boat in the Caribbean, allegedly killing three people on board. In a social media post, President Donald Trump said the boat was linked to “drug trafficking cartels.”
In a Monday social media post, Trump released a video of a military strike on an open-platform boat from an overhead camera. Unlike a Sept. 2 strike on a fast-moving speedboat, the boat captured in the Monday video was not moving and appeared to have its engines lifted out of the water.
Speaking to reporters about an hour after the video was released, Trump said he had been shown the video by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine, and had seen “spattered all over the ocean: big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”
“Gen. Caine showed me a little while ago the clip. But you could actually see it,” Trump said. “But you don’t have to see it because we have recorded proof and evidence.”
An email from Task & Purpose to Pentagon officials asking for details on the strike, including the boat’s origin, destination, and suspected cargo, was not returned.
Trump said three “male terrorists” were killed in the strike. In March, Trump designated a drug gang known as Tren de Aragua as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” bringing military action against the group under the legal umbrella of anti-terror rules. U.S. officials have said the group is tied to the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the U.S. has long considered an illegitimate leader of the country.
U.S. forces have been surging into the Caribbean for over a month, beginning with Navy ships and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, and expanding recently to F-35 fighters and other aircraft staging in Puerto Rico.
