Trump Announced Ground Strikes Against Drug Traffickers Throughout Latin America

The U.S. President declared the naval operation a success.

The US Army will begin conducting ground strikes against drug trafficking targets throughout Latin America, President Donald Trump has announced.

"We've stopped 96% of drug shipments by water and now we're starting [similar actions for shipments] by land. It [drug delivery] is much easier by land, and it [ground strikes] will start happening," Bloomberg quoted Trump, who was speaking to reporters Friday at the White House, as saying. However, he declined to give details on exactly when and where the escalation of his military campaign, which initially targeted Venezuelan ships that Washington said were carrying drugs to the U.S.

The president had previously warned that the U.S. would strike ground targets inside Venezuela. Such statements by Trump were seen as a pressure campaign against the country's president, Nicolas Maduro, with a bounty being announced for his capture, but he now insists that the targeted firings could affect other countries in the region. "It doesn't have to happen in Venezuela," Trump said at a briefing, adding that "people who are bringing drugs into our country are being targeted." According to the White House chief of staff, if drug overdose deaths were counted in the same way as combat casualties on the front lines, it would be "a war unparalleled."

Since early September, the US military has been waging a military campaign against suspected drug trafficking ships in the Caribbean and the Pacific on Trump's orders. The strikes have killed dozens of people. Some of the survivors were deported to Latin American countries after being rescued from the water.

On November 29, Trump announced the closure of the skies over Venezuela, to whose shores a strike group of the US navy, including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, had arrived shortly before. The US has also begun seizing sub-sanctioned tankers off Venezuela's coast.

But strikes on ground targets in the region would represent a major escalation of the campaign. Maduro said this week that if his country is attacked, the working class should organize a general strike and seek "an even more radical revolution."

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