The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) on Monday night announced it carried out military strikes against three drug trafficking vessels in Eastern Pacific waters, killing eight narco-terrorists.
SOUTHCOM shared unclassified footage of the three separate strikes on a video shared through social media, and detailed that intelligence confirmed the three vessels were transiting along “known narco-trafficking routes” in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
The strikes were carried out at the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
“A total of eight male narco-terrorists were killed during these actions—three in the first vessel, two in the second and three in the third,” SOUTHCOM further detailed.
The U.S. military has carried out more than 20 such precision strikes against drug-trafficking boats in Pacific and Caribbean waters since September, which have so far resulted in the deaths of roughly 90 narco-terrorists.
Earlier this month, SOUTHCOM announced that another strike in the Eastern Pacific Ocean against a drug-trafficking vessel resulted in the deaths of four suspected narco-terrorists.
The strikes against drug trafficking vessels, and the ongoing U.S. military presence in Caribbean waters are part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to curb the flow of drugs entering the United States.
Infographic titled “Main cocaine trafficking routes across the Americas.” (Omar Zaghloul/Anadolu via Getty)
In particular, the strikes against drug traffickers in Caribbean waters have drawn the ire of Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, who is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges and has an active $50 million bounty on information that can lead to his arrest and/or conviction.
Maduro stands accused by U.S. courts of being a leading figure, if not the leader of, the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking operation run by members of the Venezuelan regime and the military.
RELATED: Drugs Go Boom! Trump Administration Destroys Another Cartel Boat
The Maduro regime, who first falsely claimed that the first September strikes against drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean were “fake” and generated by Artificial Intelligence, now claims that the United States’ drug-fighting efforts in the Caribbean are part of a purported plot to “invade” Venezuela and oust him from power.
On Monday evening, President Trump signed an executive order classifying the deadly drug fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
“With this historic executive order I will sign today, we’re formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is what it is. No bomb does what this is doing; 200,000-300,000 people die every year that we know of,” President Trump said.
Read the full article here