US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the US military carried out a strike on a Venezuelan drug cartel vessel heading to the United States, the second such strike against a drug boat in recent weeks.
He said three men were killed in the strike, adding that it occurred in international waters.
"This morning, on my orders, US military forces conducted a second kinetic strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narco-terrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility," Trump said in a social media post.
"These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels pose a threat to US national security, foreign policy, and vital US interests," Trump said. US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is the military's combatant command which encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean.
The post also included a nearly 30-second video, with markings of "unclassified" on the top, which appeared to show a vessel in a body of water exploding and then on fire.
Later on Monday, Trump said that, "we have proof, all you have to do is look at the cargo that was...spattered all over the ocean, big bags of cocaine and fentanyl."
The Venezuelan communications ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest strike comes amid a large US military buildup in the southern Caribbean. Five US F-35 aircraft were seen landing in Puerto Rico on Saturday after the Trump administration ordered 10 of the stealth fighters to join the buildup.
There are also at least seven US warships in the region, along with one nuclear-powered submarine.
Trump, speaking with reporters on Monday, suggested that operations could also be conducted on land against suspected drug smugglers.
"When they come by land, we're going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats," Trump said. "But maybe by talking about it a little bit, it won't happen."
Earlier this month, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told sailors and Marines on a warship off Puerto Rico that they were not deployed to the Caribbean for training but instead sent to the "front lines" of a critical counter-narcotics mission.
On Monday, Hegseth, in a post on social media, suggested an expansive mission for the US military against drug traffickers: "We will track them, kill them, and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere — at the times and places of our choosing."
Hours before Trump's post, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that recent incidents between his country and the United States were an "aggression" by the US and that communications between the two governments had largely ended.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali. Additional reporting by Jasper Ward and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Rami Ayyub, Rosalba O'Brien and Michael Perry)