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United States President Donald Trump has announced that the US military has struck a Venezuelan boat that he claims was being operated by a drug cartel and was headed to the US.
Trump said three men were killed in Monday’s attack.
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The attack is the second by the US on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat. The first took place on September 2.
Here is all we know about the latest attack:
What happened in this attack?
“This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to US National Security, Foreign Policy and vital US Interests,” he added.
SOUTHCOM is a unified combat command of the US Department of Defense responsible for operations in 31 countries across Central and South America, the Caribbean and their territorial waters.
Trump’s post was accompanied by a 30-second video clip showing a vessel explode into flames. The clip says “UNCLASSIFIED” in green font at the top. Trump wrote that “3 male terrorists” were killed in the attack.
Trump continued his post with: “BE WARNED – IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!”
What happened during the first attack?
On September 3, Trump posted a video on Truth Social of aerial footage of another vessel being bombed the day before. He wrote that this was an attack against “positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area”.
Trump added that Tren de Aragua is a US-identified “foreign terrorist organisation” that works “under the control” of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this strike,” Trump wrote at the time.
What do we know about who was on board?
The US and Venezuela have not revealed details about those who died on the vessel or those who were on board the boat in the latest attack. Neither side has released the names of the people killed or on board.
Trump has used the term “terrorists” to describe the people killed in both instances.
After the attack on September 2, Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said none of the 11 people killed was a Tren de Aragua member. “When we asked in the towns, none was from Tren de Aragua. None were drug traffickers,” Cabello said.
The Trump administration has not yet offered any evidence to substantiate its claims that the passengers on the first vessel that the US attacked were members of Tren de Aragua or that people in either boat were carrying drugs or were “terrorists”.
How has Venezuela responded?
But on Monday, Maduro had called the bombing of the first boat a “heinous crime”.
Maduro described that attack as “a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not militarily threatening any country”.
The Venezuelan leader accused the US of trying to provoke Venezuela into war and the ultimate goal of the US was for “a regime change for oil” rather than a crackdown on drug cartels.
Maduro said relations with the US have been completely broken. “Today I can announce that communications have been destroyed by them with their bomb threats, death threats and blackmail,” he said.
Maduro also called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio the “lord of death and war”.
Besides the two boats that have been bombed, Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday accused US forces of illegally boarding and occupying one of the country’s fishing vessels in Venezuela’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
An EEZ is the region up to 200 nautical miles (370km) from a country where only it has the right to economically explore and exploit resources. Much of a country’s EEZ lies in international waters, so another nation’s ships may pass through it. But it is rare for a country to target a fishing vessel engaged in economic activity in the EEZ of the country the boat belongs to.
The ministry statement said: “The warship deployed 18 armed agents who boarded and occupied the small, harmless boat for eight hours.”
Last week, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil told CNN in an interview: “We are not betting on conflict nor do we want conflict.”
In response to reports about the US deployment of warships in August, Maduro called on his supporters to join militias to defend Venezuela, declaring, “No empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela.”
What is the broader context?
The first attack in Venezuelan waters came after news agencies reported US warships had been deployed to the southern Caribbean.
The US Fleet Forces Command announced on August 14 that sailors and Marines from the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group had departed Norfolk, Virginia, and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina but did not disclose mission details or the deployment destination.
The Trump administration accuses the Maduro government of working directly with drug cartels and being involved in cocaine trafficking. It has accused Tren de Aragua of being a front for Maduro’s leftist government.
The US government has not provided evidence to substantiate these allegations, which the Maduro government has denied.
A classified US intelligence report released in April found no evidence of links between Tren de Aragua and senior Maduro officials although it noted that Venezuela’s permissive environment enables drug gangs. The report drew input from all 18 agencies that comprise the US intelligence community. All agencies except the Federal Bureau of Investigation agreed with the findings.
In his post on Monday, Trump blamed Venezuela for smuggling cocaine into the US. “The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US,” he wrote.
But according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, most cultivation of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, occurs in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and the main US-bound cocaine routes run through Colombia, Peru and Ecuador – not Venezuela. A 2024 US Drug Enforcement Administration report also found that 84 percent of cocaine seized in the US originated from Colombia and did not mention Venezuela.
Washington has not had formal diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019 and does not recognise Maduro’s government as legitimate.
