By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Department of Defense said late on Thursday that two Venezuela military aircraft flew near a U.S. Navy vessel in international waters.
The U.S. military killed 11 people aboard a vessel from Venezuela in the Caribbean on Tuesday that President Donald Trump said was carrying illegal narcotics and that belonged to a drug cartel he designated a “terrorist organization.” Legal experts had raised questions about the attack.
The Defense Department statement said on Thursday Venezuela is “strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the U.S. military. The statement did not provide further details.
The Pentagon called the action a “highly provocative move” that it says “was designed to interfere with our counter narco-terror operations.”
The New York Times reported, citing a U.S. defense official, that two Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer Jason Dunham in the southern Caribbean Sea. The U.S. warship did not engage, the U.S. official was cited as saying by the newspaper.
Tuesday’s attack marked a departure in the use of the military. Trump said in a social media post that the boat was transporting illegal narcotics, which would normally be the responsibility of the U.S. Coast Guard to intercept. If the Coast Guard had been fired upon when trying to stop the boat, the Coast Guard members would be justified in defending themselves, legal experts said.
However, Trump posted a video to social media that appeared to show a speeding boat being destroyed by an air strike.
The administration did not provide any evidence that the United States was under imminent threat of attack, that the vessel was armed and did not identify targets on the boat who were critical to an extremist attack, as past presidents have done in similar attacks.
In the eyes of many people around the world, those on the boat were civilians and the attack will be seen as an extrajudicial killing, said legal experts.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Stephen Coates)
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