The US has carried out two more strikes on vessels allegedly carrying drugs in the Pacific Ocean, as a Colombian media outlet released a photo purportedly from a White House meeting in which the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela can be seen wearing prison jumpsuits.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said in a post on X on Monday that "two lethal kinetic strikes” had been conducted the day before against boats belonging to designated terrorist organisations.
"These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific,” he said.
Six people were killed in the strikes, Mr Hegseth added. "Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people,” he said.
These are the latest in a series of US strikes on boats alleged to be carrying narcotics towards the US. The strikes have been primarily carried out in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela but have been expanded to include the Pacific in recent weeks.
It comes after Colombia's Cambio magazine released a photo of a White House meeting in which a US official can be seen holding a file containing what appears to be an artificial intelligence-generated photo showing Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in orange prison jumpsuits.
Cambio reported that during a meeting that took place in the Oval Office in late October, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair can be seen holding the file as he stands with a group of Republican lawmakers. The file appears to contain the photo and a document titled "The Trump Doctrine for Colombia and the Western Hemisphere".
US President Donald Trump has previously called Mr Petro a "thug” and accused both him and Mr Maduro of involvement in the South American drug trade. Mr Maduro has a $50 million bounty on his head for alleged drug-trafficking and "narco-terrorism”. The US has imposed sanctions on Mr Petro, along with his wife and son, for failing to curb drug trafficking in Colombia.
The National could not independently verify the existence of the photo. Colombian media said the image had been deleted from the online White House gallery.
Following the report, Mr Petro hinted in a post on X on Monday that he would be recalling the Colombian ambassador to the US for consultations over the issue.
"Here, the issue is to understand why on the official White House page, they portray me as if I were a prisoner in a US jail,” he said. "That is brutal disrespect to the people who elected me, to the Colombian nation and its history.”
Quashing rumours that Mr Petro would expel the US ambassador, Colombia's Minister of Foreign Affairs told W Radio that the government would instead send a "verbal note” to the American emissary.
