WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States had carried out a strike on a vessel allegedly carrying drugs in the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility, the latest U.S. strike in the region.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the Pentagon had ordered the strike and killed “3 male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel.”
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
Trump did not specify where the vessel departed from or where exactly the strike took place.
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is the U.S. military’s combatant command that encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean.
The latest strike comes amid a large U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean. Five U.S. 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 U.S. warships in the region, along with one nuclear-powered submarine.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Kanishka Singh in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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