Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounced on Sunday the discovery of bodies in the Caribbean Sea which “could be” victims of American military attacks in the region. Petro called for an investigation into this discovery made on a beach in La Guajira, a border region with Venezuela, in the north of the country. The Colombian leader, who has previously publicly condemned US attacks in the region, suggested in a social media post that the deaths of the bodies found could have been caused by US bombing.
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On Thursday, public television channel RTVC reported the discovery of two bodies in the city and several others on the Venezuelan side, without specifying the total number.
“I ask the Forensic Medical Institute to establish their identity… They could have been killed by shelling at sea,” Petro wrote on X, along with a video of a body on the sand of a beach.
A police spokesperson for the department of La Guajira confirmed to AFP that the bodies had been found on Thursday on this fishing beach, but clarified that the circumstances of the deaths had not yet been determined.
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Since the start of the deployment of American military assets in the region near the Venezuelan coast in August, the government of American President Donald Trump has carried out at least 22 airstrikes in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, killing 87 people, vehemently condemned by Petro.
The US government claims that the actions in the region are part of an operation against drug trafficking, but has presented no evidence that the attacked ships were carrying drugs.
On the other hand, Venezuelan authorities claim that Trump’s interest is in overthrowing President Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
The United Nations has highlighted “strong evidence” of “extrajudicial” killings linked to this military campaign, with no evidence of links between the attacked ships and drug cartels.
Petro, in a context of growing diplomatic tensions with Trump, denounces the attacks as “extrajudicial executions” and criticizes Washington’s anti-drug policy. This year, the US president removed Colombia from the list of allied nations in the fight against drug trafficking, saying the country was not doing enough to contain cocaine trafficking. In addition, he imposed severe economic sanctions on Petro and some members of his family.
Colombia is the country that produces the most cocaine in the world. Eight months before leaving power, Petro considers the measures unfair and affirms that, under his government, records for drug seizures were reached.
A U.S. military officer told senators at a meeting last Thursday that the boat hit by the United States in an air attack on Sept. 2 was headed to another ship bound for Suriname. Video released during the meeting also shows that the target, identified by Washington as a suspected drug trafficker, was not completely destroyed in a single attack.
Democratic lawmakers who have already condemned the affair have since pushed for the footage to be released in full. According to Reuters, footage shows two men who survived the first attack clung to the wreckage of the boat for about an hour before being killed in a second attack.
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The information about the boat’s fate, published by US channel CNN, adds to other recently released details of the action that weaken the Donald Trump administration’s argument that hitting the boat repeatedly and killing survivors was necessary to protect the United States from an imminent threat.
According to information collected by American forces, the boat hit in early September planned to “meet” the second ship and transfer drugs to it, Admiral Frank Bradley said during the meeting with senators. The US military, however, was unable to locate the second ship.
The revelation comes at a time when the White House and Defense Department are under increasing pressure to explain the legal basis for the operation, which was carried out without consulting Congress.
The Defense Department’s law of war manual prohibits attacking incapacitated, unconscious or shipwrecked combatants until they attempt to return to combat. The manual explicitly cites the killing of the shipwreck survivors as an example of a “clearly illegal” order.
*Material currently being updated
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