Six people have been killed in new US attacks on two ships in the eastern Pacific Ocean that Washington says were transporting drugs, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.
The attacks, which now total 19, including two yesterday, have killed at least 75 people, and are part of United States President Donald Trump's campaign against drug trafficking in South American waters, which many see as pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
"Our intelligence services know that these ships are linked to drug trafficking, that they were transporting narcotics and that they were moving along a known transit route for drug trafficking," Minister Hegseth announced on social media.
Hegseth and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Republican and Democratic lawmakers responsible for national security issues and provided them with a legal justification for the attacks on the ships.
The attacks began in September and were mainly directed at ships in the Caribbean Sea, and over time they shifted to ships in the eastern Pacific Ocean, where large quantities of cocaine are suspected of being smuggled.
The Trump administration has deployed a large number of troops and aircraft carriers to the South American maritime space.
Trump justified the attacks by arguing that the US is in an armed conflict with drug cartels and that the ships are operated by foreign terrorist organizations that are flooding American cities with drugs.
The attacks on the ships have fueled speculation about Maduro's ouster from power in Venezuela, as he is accused of narco-terrorism in the US, while he claims that the US government is "fabricating a war against him".
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