{"id":351522,"date":"2025-12-16T05:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T05:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/351522\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T05:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T05:58:08","slug":"us-strikes-on-vessels-in-eastern-pacific-kill-8-dw-12-16-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/351522\/","title":{"rendered":"US strikes on vessels in eastern Pacific kill 8 \u2013 DW \u2013 12\/16\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States<\/a> military said late on Monday that it had carried out strikes on three alleged narco-trafficking boats in the eastern Pacific ocean, killing eight people.<\/p>\n

“Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US Southern Command said in a statement on social media platform X.<\/p>\n

“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,” it added.<\/p>\n

The US military did not give any evidence for their drug trafficking allegations.<\/p>\n

A video posted with the statement showed a boat moving\u00a0through the sea waters before exploding.<\/p>\n

Criticism mounts for Trump’s counter-narcotics campaign<\/p>\n

The US military strikes against alleged drug traffickers,\u00a0which began in September, have killed at least 90 people so far and destroyed over 20 vessels.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump<\/a> justifies the attacks as a necessary escalation to stymie the flow of drugs into the US.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0has\u00a0asserted that his country is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.<\/p>\n

Monday’s statement comes as the Trump administration faces intense scrutiny in the US Congress over its ongoing strike campaign<\/a> on alleged drug cartel boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

Top officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and\u00a0Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a>, are expected to provide closed-door briefings for lawmakers in the House and Senate.<\/p>\n

On September 2, a “double tap strike”\u00a0triggered accusations of a possible war crime.<\/p>\n

The incident saw survivors of an initial boat attack, carried out by the\u00a0US military, being killed in a second strike on the vessel.<\/p>\n

Hegseth maintains he did not order a second strike.<\/p>\n

The White House says the follow-up strike was ordered by a navy admiral.<\/p>\n

Regional tensions<\/p>\n

The Caribbean is also witnessing the largest US military buildup in decades.<\/p>\n

The strikes have\u00a0led to an increased friction<\/a> between the US and Venezuela<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Washington claims that the drug smugglers have links<\/a> to Venezuela’s strongman President Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n

Maduro denies the allegation and claims that the US is “fabricating a new war” to cause a regime change in the South American nation.<\/p>\n

The strikes have been seen as the precursor to possible US land attacks,\u00a0which Trump says are coming soon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Target Venezuela: Drug war or US power grab?<\/p>\n

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n

Edited by:\u00a0Elizabeth Schumacher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States military said late on Monday that it had carried out strikes on three alleged narco-trafficking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-351522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351522","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=351522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}