By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 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.\u201d<\/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":"By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The U.S. military said Monday that it had conducted another strike against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[60625,60624,74,76,75,60623],"class_list":["post-112892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-boat-strikes","tag-drug-boats","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-us-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}