Rubio, Trump announce 'lethal strike' on Venezuelan drug boat

This story has been updated to include additional details. See updated post here.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced via X (formerly Twitter) that the country had conducted a lethal strike on a vessel that had earlier departed from Venezuela.

The post at 3.09 p.m. read: “As @potus just announced moments ago, today the US military conducted a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization.”

CCN also reported on the post, saying the move by the Donald Trump-led administration represented a “significant escalation” against drug cartels.

The report further quoted Trump as confirming on September 2 that the US military “just over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug carrying boat.”

“It just happened moments ago, and our great general, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff … he gave us a little bit of a briefing, and you’ll see, and there’s more where that came from,” Trump said.

“We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time, and we just these came out of Venezuela, and coming out, very heavily from Venezuela,” he said.

Meanwhile, as the geopolitical tensions between the US and Venezuela intensify, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has publicly said that Venezuela is ready to respond if attacked by forces that the US government deploys in the Caribbean territory.

This is a developing story.