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The U.S. military flew a pair of supersonic, heavy bombers to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday, a little more than a week after another group of U.S. bombers made a similar trip as part of a training exercise to simulate an attack.
The US military has prepared an unusually large force Caribbean Sea and Venezuelan water, increasing speculation about the president donald trump May try to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro is accused of drug terrorism in America
Adding to the speculation, the US military since early September has been carrying out deadly attacks in Venezuelan waters against ships that Trump says are smuggling drugs.
A pair of B-1 Lancer bombers took off from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas on Thursday and flew over the Caribbean and the coast of Venezuela, according to flight tracking data. A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, confirmed that a training flight of the B-1 had taken place in the Caribbean.
The B-1 bomber could carry more bombs than any other aircraft in the US stockpile.
A similar flight of slow B-52 Stratofortress bombers was conducted over the region last week. The attackers were also accompanied by Marine Corps F-35B stealth fighter jets — one squadron is currently based in Puerto Rico — in what the Pentagon called a “bomber strike demo” in photos online.
When Trump was asked about Thursday’s B-1 flight and whether it was intended to increase military pressure on Venezuela, he said, “That’s wrong, but we’re not happy with Venezuela for a lot of reasons. Drugs is one of them.”
US forces in the Caribbean include eight warships, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones and an F-35 fighter squadron. Operation of a submarine in the maritime area has also been confirmed South America,
Trump said on Wednesday that he had the “legal authority” to attack boats allegedly carrying drugs and suggested that similar attacks could be carried out on land.
“We’re going to hit them hard when they come on the ground,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re fully prepared to do that. And when we get on the ground, we’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing.”
Secretary of Defense pete hegseth said on Wednesday that the army carried out its ninth attack, killing three in the eastern pacific oceanThis was followed by an attack in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday night, which killed two people and brought the total number of deaths from the attacks to at least 37.
The latest pair of attacks expand the Trump administration’s campaign against drug trafficking from the waters of the Caribbean in South America to the eastern Pacific.
Hegseth has drawn a direct comparison between the war on terrorism declared by the US after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the actions of the Trump administration.
“Our message to these foreign terrorist organizations is that we will treat you the same way we treated al-Qaeda,” Hegseth told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
They said, “We will find you, we will find your network, we will hunt you down and we will kill you.”