WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington carried out a strike on a vessel in the U.S. Southern Command’s “area of responsibility,” killing three males on board the vessel whom Trump alleged were trafficking illicit narcotics.
The Pentagon “ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is the U.S. military’s combatant command that encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Leslie Adler)
