Screenshot from a video of US naval strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, October 17, 2025. Photo: Reuters.
For the first time since the US began extrajudicially bombing boats in Venezuelan waters this year, a US military attack did not result in the deaths of all crew members. It was reported that there were two survivors after the bombing of what the US called a “drug boat” without providing evidence.
The incident comes amid an ongoing US military escalation in the Caribbean targeting Venezuela, under the guise of a supposed anti-drugs operation. The illegal US military actions in the international waters close to Venezuela, which include blowing up of civilian boats, have left almost 30 people dead in since early September, with no evidence presented of the victims’ alleged ties to drug trafficking. These actions are part of a U.S. military expansion in the southern Caribbean, with destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear submarine, and some 10,000 troops deployed.
On Saturday, October 18, US President Donald Trump declared that the two survivors will be repatriated to their home countries.
Reportedly, US military personnel rescued the two persons after striking a submersible vessel on Thursday, in what was at least the sixth such incident since early September.
“It was a great honor for me to destroy a massive narco-submarine sailing toward the United States along a well-known drug-trafficking route,” Trump declared on social media. US intelligence claimed that the vessel was loaded primarily with fentanyl and other drugs.
Trump said that two people on board died, and that the two survivors are being sent back to their home countries “to be detained and prosecuted.”
Although Trump did not say it, the detainees will be sent to Colombia and Ecuador, which are their countries of origin. The Trump administration chose repatriation of the detainees because it would avoid awkward questions about what the legal status of the two men would have been in the US justice system.
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Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that US military actions against ships in the region have killed at least 29 people, belonging to at least four countries, namely, Venezuela, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Ecuador.
The US president has justified the attacks by claiming that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. It is based on the same “legal” authority employed by the George W. Bush administration when it declared the war on terror after the September 11 attacks, and treats suspected drug traffickers as enemy soldiers in a traditional war.
Venezuelan President: The US wants to intimidate and demoralize our people
The incident occurs just after the recent revelation that US President Donald Trump authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela. He confirmed that he had granted the agency legal authority to carry out operations in the country through a presidential order, a mechanism that allows for clandestine and even lethal activities. Although it is still unclear whether the CIA has carried out any missions under this directive, CIA is supposed to be carrying out covert operations in all countries that are in the crosshairs of the US empire.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said on Thursday, “Through psychological warfare, the US wants to intimidate, divide, and demoralize our people; they want to harm our country. Here the people stand firmly united.”
He called US foreign policy a “crude and blatant interventionist policy” aimed at regime change, and referred to the history of US interventionism in Latin America.
“All the coups in Latin America, as proven by documents declassified by the US government, were carried out by the CIA, and presidents were assassinated by the CIA,” President Maduro said. “But now, for the first time in history, a US government announces that it has authorized and ordered an attack on a country,” he added, describing the announcement as “an act of macabre honesty.”
“Can anyone believe that the CIA has not been operating in Venezuela for 60 years? Can anyone believe that the CIA has not been conspiring against Commander Chávez and me for the past 26 years?” he questioned.
“The United States calls us ‘narco-terrorists’ without any evidence … but Venezuela will stand firm and resist,” he emphasized. “We do not want war in the Caribbean or in Latin America, no war, only peace.”
(Últimas Noticias, TRT) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ
