{"id":212126,"date":"2025-12-30T22:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T22:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/212126\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T22:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T22:38:08","slug":"us-military-carries-out-30th-strike-on-alleged-drug-boat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/212126\/","title":{"rendered":"US military carries out 30th strike on alleged drug boat"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said Monday that it had conducted another strike against a boat<\/a> accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people.<\/p>\n

The strike, which was announced by U.S. Southern Command on social media, has brought the total number of known boat strikes<\/a> to 30 and the number of people killed at least 107 since early September, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration. <\/p>\n

The military said the vessel \u201cwas engaged in narco-trafficking operations,\u201d though it did not provide evidence to back up the claim. <\/p>\n

In a video of the strike posted to social media, a boat is seen moving through water before being struck by two explosions.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has justified the attacks<\/a> as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and asserted that the U.S. is engaged in an \u201carmed conflict\u201d with drug cartels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Along with the strikes, the Trump administration has built up military forces in the region as part of an escalating pressure campaign on Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States.<\/p>\n

Trump, when asked by reporters Monday about \u201can explosion in Venezuela,\u201d said the U.S. had \u201chit\u201d a dock facility along a shore where boats accused of carrying drugs \u201cload up.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,\u201d Trump said while meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida<\/a>. Trump, the White House and the Pentagon have provided no other details.<\/p>\n

In December, the Trump administration also launched a new tactic by seizing two sanctioned oil tankers<\/a> off the coast of Venezuela and pursuing a third<\/a>. As a result, some sanctioned tankers began to divert<\/a> away from the South American country.<\/p>\n

Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. operations is to force him from power. Trump for months has suggested<\/a> that he may conduct land strikes in Venezuela or possibly another country.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has been faced scrutiny from lawmakers<\/a> over the boat strike campaign. It grew amid revelations that the first attack in early September involved a follow-up strike that killed two survivors<\/a> clinging to the wreckage of a boat after the first hit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said Monday that it had conducted another strike against a boat accused of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[118167,127,75264,122,85,46,3896,43,238,12526,126],"class_list":["post-212126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-118167","tag-article","tag-drug-crimes","tag-general-news","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-military-and-defense","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}