US sends aircraft carrier to waters off the coast of South America as part of another escalation and military buildup
On Friday, the Pentagon announced that the US military is sending an aircraft carrier to waters off the coast of South America as part of another escalation and military buildup in the region, UNN reports with reference to AP.
Details
"Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to US Southern Command to enhance US capabilities to detect, monitor, and interdict illicit activities that threaten the security and prosperity of the United States," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.
The deployment of the aircraft carrier is a serious escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually large US military buildup in the Caribbean and waters off the coast of Venezuela.
Earlier on Friday, Hegseth said that the US military had carried out its 10th strike on a vessel suspected of drug trafficking, accusing the "Tren de Aragua" gang of operating the vessel and causing the deaths of six people in the Caribbean.
The pace of strikes has accelerated in recent days from one every few weeks when they began to three this week, resulting in at least 43 deaths since September. The last two strikes were in the eastern Pacific, expanding the area from which the military launched attacks and shifting them to where much of the world's largest producers' cocaine is smuggled.
Addition
US President Donald Trump publicly called Colombian President Gustavo Petro "the leader of illegal drug trafficking," and the Pentagon confirmed the destruction of a vessel allegedly linked to Colombian rebels.
