{"id":59753,"date":"2025-09-12T15:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T15:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/59753\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T15:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T15:25:08","slug":"venezuela-says-11-killed-in-us-boat-strike-were-not-gang-members-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/59753\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela says 11 killed in US boat strike were not gang members \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

None of the 11 people killed in a US<\/a> military strike on a boat in the Caribbean last week were members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, Venezuela<\/a>\u2019s interior minister said on Thursday, as the South American nation deployed troops amid heightened tensions with the US.<\/p>\n

The administration of US president Donald Trump<\/a> has said the boat was transporting illegal narcotics, but has provided scant further information about the incident, even amid demands from members of the US Congress for a justification for the action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey openly confessed to killing 11 people,\u201d interior minister and ruling party head Diosdado Cabello<\/a> said on state television. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have done our investigations here in our country and there are the families of the disappeared people who want their relatives, and when we asked in the towns, none were from Tren de Aragua, none were drug traffickers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA murder has been committed against a group of citizens using lethal force,\u201d added Cabello, questioning how the US could determine whether drugs were on the boat and why the people were not instead arrested.<\/p>\n

The Venezuelan government said after the incident that a video post by Trump of the strike was created using artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe US Navy’s USS Lake Erie sails through the Panama Canal as US president Donald Trump escalates his campaign against the socialist government of Venezuela with the deployment of warships, aircraft and troops to the southern Caribbean. Photograph: Mauricio Valenzuela\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n

\u201cThese were evil Tren de Aragua narcoterrorists trying to bring illegal drugs into our country and kill Americans,\u201d White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in response to questions.<\/p>\n

Kelly said Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> is not the legitimate president of Venezuela and that he is a \u201cfugitive\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Venezuelan president Maduro said early on Thursday his country would deploy military, police and civilian defences at 284 \u201cbattlefront\u201d locations across the country, his latest show of military capacity.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0US pushing African countries to take in Venezuelan deportees, Nigeria saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has ratcheted up the US military presence in the southern Caribbean as part of what it says is a crackdown on drug smugglers, and ordered the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to a Puerto Rico airfield.<\/p>\n

Maduro, who has alleged the US military is hoping to drive him from power, did not say how many military, police or civilian militias would participate in the new deployment.<\/p>\n

\"USUS Marines V-22 Osprey fly near Jos\u00e9 Aponte de la Torre Airport, formerly Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, on September 11th, in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. Photograph: Miguel J Rodr\u00edguez Carrillo\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

His government has already announced an increase of 25,000 troops for states along Venezuela\u2019s border with Colombia that are drug trafficking hubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re ready for an armed fight, if it\u2019s necessary,\u201d Maduro said from Ciudad Caribia, on the country\u2019s central coast, in an early morning broadcast on state television where he was flanked by his defence minister.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlong all the Venezuelan coasts, from the border with Colombia to the east of the country, from north to south and east to west, we have a full preparation of official troops.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Bolsonaro jailing marks end to Brazil\u2019s notorious leniency with military menOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Reuters witnesses in several cities around Venezuela did not note an increase in troop presence.<\/p>\n

The US last month doubled its reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro to $50 million<\/a> over allegations of drug trafficking and links to criminal groups.<\/p>\n

Maduro has always denied the accusations, and his government says Venezuela is not a drug producer. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"None of the 11 people killed in a US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[289,9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,42875,7,8,107,4450,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-59753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-nicolas-maduro","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-venezuela","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}