President Donald Trump said on Friday he is not considering attacks on Venezuela, which fears that a major US military build-up in the region is aimed at regime change in Caracas.
The Pentagon has sent eight warships to the Caribbean, sent F-35 stealth warplanes to Puerto Rico, and an aircraft carrier strike group is en route to the region – a huge military force that, Washington insists, is aimed at disrupting drug trafficking.
“No,” Mr Trump responded when asked by a journalist aboard Air Force One about reports that he was considering such strikes.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered the same message, as he responded to an article in the Miami Herald that said Washington's forces were poised to attack Venezuela.
“Your 'sources' claiming to have 'knowledge of the situation' tricked you into writing a fake story,” Mr Rubio said in a post on X.
The Trump administration has said in a notice to Congress that the US is engaged in “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels, describing them as terrorist groups as part of its explanation for the attacks.
Earlier on Friday, the UN urged the US to halt strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific allegedly carrying drug traffickers, and prevent extrajudicial killings.
Volker Turk, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the strikes were “unacceptable” and a breach of international human rights law.
“The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them,” he said in a statement.
US strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific in recent weeks have killed at least 62 people on boats that Washington claims were ferrying drugs. Family members and victims' governments said some of them were fishermen.
“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said in a post on X on Tuesday after a strike. “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”
