International Glance
The US military killed 14 people and left one survivor in more strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the eastern Pacific, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Monday, as the Trump administration continued to expand its campaign beyond the Caribbean.
The latest strikes mean the US has now attacked at least 13 vessels and brought the officially acknowledged death toll to 51 people since the campaign began at the start of September.
Hegseth did not provide geographic details beyond saying that the strikes took place in the eastern Pacific, in international waters. Last week, the administration started targeting boats on the western side of the Americas after initially focusing on boats off the coast of Venezuela.
The four boats were hit on Sunday in three strikes, Hegseth said in a social media post announcing the matter. His said the boats were “known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics”. He also acknowledged there was a survivor.
An overnight Russian drone attack on Kyiv killed three people and wounded dozens, including seven children, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
The Trump administration’s military airstrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky.
As the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire enters its third week, Palestinians return to destroyed buildings posing deadly hazards with an estimated 66,000 tons of unexploded ordnance buried in the rubble.
It wasn’t as calamitous as his first Oval Office encounter in February, said The Guardian, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s latest visit to the White House last Friday did not go well.
