{"id":351407,"date":"2025-12-16T04:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/351407\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T04:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:24:07","slug":"us-military-conducts-deadly-strikes-on-boats-in-the-eastern-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/351407\/","title":{"rendered":"US military conducts deadly strikes on boats in the Eastern Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Maduro denounces Trump’s threats of land strikes<\/p>\n

Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro denounced Trump\u2019s threats of land strikes after the U.S. seized an oil tanker near Venezuela.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON DC \u2014 \u00a0The U.S. Southern Command said on Monday, Dec. 15, that it carried out strikes on three vessels in international waters, killing eight men.<\/p>\n

“Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” the\u00a0military\u00a0said in a post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The United States struck more than 20 vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela as part of a\u00a0military\u00a0campaign President Donald Trump<\/a> has launched on drug smuggling from the region. At least 90 suspected drug smugglers have been killed in the process.<\/p>\n

The use of the\u00a0military\u00a0to attack suspected drug vessels marks a stark departure from how the U.S. has historically dealt with them. The Trump administration has sought to defend the\u00a0legality\u00a0of the strikes, which some\u00a0legal experts\u00a0have said amount to unlawful extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n

“Our operations in the Southcom region are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the Law of Armed Conflict,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters earlier this month.<\/p>\n

The strikes are viewed as the precursor to U.S. land strikes on Venezuela that Trump has said will\u00a0soon start.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Caitlin Webber)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maduro denounces Trump’s threats of land strikes Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro denounced Trump\u2019s threats of land strikes after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,414,75920,1127,47470,174934,8609,27605,14804,12,685,22046,174935,2605,2420,4379,34645,3,2105,13470,34647,111,88125,21997,3479,13692,21,19,22,20,25,24,18232,130867,48636,1139,130077,84083,2002],"class_list":["post-351407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-and","tag-cartels","tag-conflict","tag-d-c","tag-dealing","tag-death","tag-death-u0026-tragedy","tag-donald","tag-donald-trump","tag-drug","tag-drug-cartels","tag-drug-dealing-and-trafficking","tag-drugs","tag-government","tag-military","tag-negative","tag-news","tag-on","tag-overall","tag-overall-negative","tag-politics","tag-trafficking","tag-tragedy","tag-trump","tag-u0026","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-venezuela","tag-venezuelan","tag-venezuelan-government","tag-war","tag-war-on-drugs","tag-war-u0026-conflict","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}