Washington.- The Pentagon would have used a secret aircraft with a civilian appearance in the first attack against a vessel that, according to the Administration of President Donald Trump, was transporting drugs, an operation that caused the death of 11 people last September in international waters of the Caribbean, near Venezuela, officials informed the newspaper The New York Times under condition of anonymity.
According to the newspaper, the aircraft did not carry visible weaponry under its wings and concealed its ammunition within the fuselage, in addition to not presenting any type of military appearance. Officials cited by the newspaper noted that they observed surveillance images of the attack.
The recordings show that the aircraft descended at low altitude and that the vessel returned towards Venezuela after spotting it, before the first attack.
The operation was one of more than 35 carried out by the United States armed forces against vessels in international waters, under the justification of combating drug trafficking within the framework of the mission called ‘Southern Spear’.
According to the New York Times, two survivors of the first attack appeared to later salute the aircraft from wreckage of the overturned hull, before dying in a second attack that also sank the remains of the vessel, which has intensified criticism of the legality of the operation.
Since then, the U.S. Army has chosen to employ clearly identifiable military aircraft, including MQ-9 Reaper drones, in subsequent attacks.
In an operation carried out in October, two survivors managed to escape by swimming and were rescued and repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador, avoiding a second attack, officials detailed.
The attacks occurred before, on January 3rd and by order of President Trump, U.S. military forces deployed near Venezuela entered the country to capture the leader of Caracas, Nicolás Maduro, who has been held in a federal prison in New York for ten days.
Operations against vessels attributed to drug trafficking have been questioned by analysts and governments such as Colombia, which consider them a violation of international law and denounce that they have left more than a hundred dead without their link to organized crime being publicly demonstrated.
