The US military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and build-up of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced on Friday.
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R Ford and its strike group to deploy to US Southern Command to “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States”, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.
The 100,000-tonne ship is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea along with three destroyers. It would likely take several days for the ships to make the journey to South America.
The transfer came as the US military has conducted its 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, Mr Hegseth said on Friday.
READ MORE
The strike on the boat, allegedly operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, left six people dead in the Caribbean.
In a social media post, Mr Hegseth said the strike occurred overnight. It marks the second time the Trump administration has tied one of its operations to the gang, which has its origins in a Venezuelan prison.
The regularity of the strikes has quickened in recent days from one every few weeks in September, when they first began, to three this week.
Two of the strikes this week were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area in which the military was launching attacks and where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.
In a 20-second black and white video of the strike posted to social media, a small boat can be seen apparently sitting motionless on the water when a long, thin projectile descends on it, triggering an explosion.
The video ends before the blast dies down enough for the remains of the boat to be seen again.
Mr Hegseth said the strike happened in international waters. He added it was the first such strike conducted at night.
“If you are a narco terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat al-Qaeda,” Mr Hegseth said in the post. “Day or night, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down and kill you.”
The strike also came hours after the US military flew a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday.
The flight was the most recent move in an unusually large military build-up in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela. It has raised speculation that US president Donald Trump could try to topple Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
Mr Trump, this month, declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and said the US was in an “armed conflict” with them.
Despite the concerns from some legislators, the Republican-controlled Senate has voted down a Democratic-sponsored war powers resolution that would have required Mr Trump to seek authorisation from Congress before further military strikes. – AP
