Oct. 9 (UPI) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro has claimed that Colombians were aboard the most recent boat to be attacked by the United States in the Caribbean.
Washington has said strikes on four vessels in recent weeks that killed 21 people were aimed at “narco-traffickers,” but Petro said in a post on X regarding an attack off Venezuela on Oct. 3 that the boat was Colombian, warning that the Caribbean had become the latest theater of war.
“Indications show that the last boat bombed was Colombian with Colombian citizens inside it. I hope their families come forward and report it. There is no war against smuggling; there is a war for oil and it must be stopped by the world,” Petro wrote Wednesday.
He alleged that what he termed “aggression” was directed at all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
President Donald Trump‘s administration has indicated its military activities in the Caribbean were focused on Venezuela and its strongman president, Nicolas Maduro, whom it accuses of heading a terrorist operation that is purposely inundating the United States with vast amounts of drugs.
Petro’s claim was the first time any country has said its nationals had been killed in any of the attacks, which began in early September.
Two unnamed U.S. officials confirmed to The New York Times that Colombians were on at least one of the vessels taken out in four attacks since Trump launched his campaign to disrupt trafficking operations in the region on Sept. 3.
All those killed were drug traffickers, according to the White House, which has provided nothing to back up the allegation, with those in the first two attacks identified as Venezuelans.
No legal grounds for the attacks have been provided, and legal experts said none existed.
Maduro had stated that he believes the real motivation is a desire to topple him from power.
The White House rejected Petro’s claims outright and demanded a retraction, saying in a statement that it was looking forward to him withdrawing his “baseless and reprehensible” comments.
However it said that despite “policy differences” between Washington and Bogota, the United States was “committed to close co-operation on a range of shared priorities, including regional security and stability.”
An official said the administration was also privately pressuring Petro to back down through diplomatic back channels because it wanted to keep the bilateral relationship on track.
Petro’s post was in response to a comment by Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., saying he was bringing a measure to the floor of the upper chamber banning “illegal” strikes that were not authorized by Congress on vessels in the Caribbean.
The measure jointly sponsored with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, requiring the administration to obtain approval from Congress, was defeated in a 48-51 vote along partisan lines later Wednesday.
A recent memo to Congress that was leaked said that the United States now considered it was in a “non-international armed conflict,” a catch-all stance that provides cover for use of wartime powers such as killing “enemy fighters” even if they do not present a clear and present danger.
The friction with Bogota comes two weeks after the State Department revoked Petro’s U.S. visa in response to him calling on U.S. troops to disobey orders during a pro-Palestinian rally in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
That incident prompted a furious reaction from the Colombian Foreign Ministry which accused Trump of breaking international law by using access as a “diplomatic weapon,” which it argued violated the spirit of the 1945 United Nations Charter.