TEHRAN (Defapress) – The US SouthCom wrote on X: “On Monday, December 15, the ‘Joint Task Force Southern Shield’ carried out deadly attacks on three boats operating on behalf of international organizations in international waters, at the direction of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
The command added that intelligence confirmed that the boats were passing through a known drug trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and were involved in drug trafficking.
The US Southern Command announced that a total of eight narco-terrorists were killed during these operations: three on the first boat, two on the second boat, and three on the third boat.
The US has attacked more than 20 boats in its military operation in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, which it calls “Operation Southern Shield,” and killed at least 91 people.
Tensions between Washington and Caracas have been increasingly heightened by the deployment of US troops in the Caribbean.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said that US President Donald Trump’s claim about the “war on drugs” has confronted the South American country with the “greatest continental threat in a century.”
Caracas officials see the large-scale deployment of US troops and military equipment in the Caribbean as a preparation for the overthrow of the Venezuelan government.
Trump has recently announced several times that US ground operations against “drug cartels on Venezuelan territory” will soon begin.