(Reuters) -U.S. forces attacked a vessel associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday, the same day President Donald Trump called Colombian President Gustavo Petro an "illegal drug leader" and said payments to the South American nation would cease.
Hegseth wrote on X that the Pentagon had destroyed a vessel and killed three people on Friday "in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility," which includes the Caribbean.
He said the ship was affiliated with the leftist rebel group National Liberation Army and was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, without offering evidence to back the claim.
It was the latest in a series of U.S. strikes in the Caribbean on vessels that the Trump administration says were transporting drugs.
The Pentagon said it had nothing to add beyond Hegseth's initial post.
The Colombian embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post from Hegseth came hours after Trump accused Petro on social media of "strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs." The United States will stop large-scale payments and subsidies to Colombia, Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc," Trump wrote.
Reuters could not immediately establish which payments Trump was referring to. Colombia was once among the largest recipients of U.S. aid in the Western Hemisphere, but the flow of money was suddenly curtailed this year by the shuttering of USAID, the U.S. government's humanitarian assistance arm.
The U.S. State Department referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a query.
Relations between Bogota and Washington have frayed since Trump returned to office in January. Last month the United States revoked Petro's visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey Trump's orders.
The U.S. administration's deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean have also outraged Colombians. Many legal experts and human rights activists have condemned the extraordinary series of military actions, with Amnesty International describing it as murder on the high seas.
Earlier this month, Petro said one of the strikes hit a Colombian vessel, an allegation the Trump administration denied.
Colombia is fighting its own longstanding drug problems. Last year, Petro pledged to tame coca-growing regions in the country with massive social and military intervention, but the strategy has brought little success.
In September, Trump designated countries such as Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia and Venezuela among those the United States believes to have "failed demonstrably" in upholding counternarcotics agreements during the past year.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Raphael Satter; Editing by Nia Williams and Sergio Non)
