DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

As T&T and the wider Caribbean await an of­fi­cial re­sponse to re­ports that two na­tion­als were among six peo­ple killed in a Unit­ed States ki­net­ic strike off Venezuela’s coast, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge avoid­ed ques­tions from the me­dia on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ac­com­pa­nied by sev­er­al Cab­i­net col­leagues at the Ca­roni Lease Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cer­e­mo­ny Part II, held at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s. Among those present were Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath, and Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee.

At the end of the cer­e­mo­ny, the Prime Min­is­ter was es­cort­ed away from a me­dia hud­dle that had been set up to pose ques­tions. She paused briefly, say­ing on­ly that she was on her way to a vir­tu­al Cari­com meet­ing be­fore a Cab­i­net ses­sion ahead of to­day’s bud­get de­bate.

Sturge al­so de­clined to speak, leav­ing the room through a side door de­spite re­peat­ed calls from re­porters. Guardian Me­dia fol­lowed him as he ex­it­ed through an­oth­er door­way away from the press.

On­ly one min­is­ter stopped to en­gage. Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein redi­rect­ed all ques­tions, say­ing, “I’ll not com­ment on that. Those are mat­ters bet­ter placed be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs. As I told you all, I’m stay­ing in my lane. The Prime Min­is­ter told all of us to stay in our lane. I’m here to dis­trib­ute land, and that is what I’m here to do.”

Res­i­dents of the north coast fish­ing vil­lage of Las Cuevas, in­clud­ing fam­i­ly and friends, iden­ti­fied two lo­cals, Chad “Char­po” Joseph and Richie Sama­roo, as be­ing among those killed when the ves­sel was struck on Tues­day.

The US gov­ern­ment has not re­leased ev­i­dence to sup­port its claim that the tar­get­ed ves­sel was en­gaged in nar­cotics traf­fick­ing. On Tues­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said the strike had killed six “nar­coter­ror­ists,” claim­ing “in­tel­li­gence con­firmed the ves­sel was traf­fick­ing nar­cotics” and that it was “as­so­ci­at­ed with il­lic­it nar­coter­ror­ist net­works.”

Head of US South­ern Com­mand to re­tire

The in­ci­dent al­so co­in­cid­ed with an un­ex­pect­ed an­nounce­ment from Ad­mi­ral Alvin Holsey, head of the Unit­ed States South­ern Com­mand, who sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to re­sign two days af­ter the op­er­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post, Holsey’s de­par­ture comes well ahead of sched­ule, in what of­fi­cials de­scribed as a sud­den move as Trump push­es to ex­pand his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s cam­paign against drug car­tels in the re­gion.

Reuters re­port­ed that Holsey’s res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day came two years be­fore his term was due to end and fol­lowed in­ter­nal dis­agree­ments with Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth over op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean, and spec­u­la­tion that he might be dis­missed in the days lead­ing up to his an­nounce­ment.

In a post on X, US South­ern Com­mand shared a state­ment at­trib­uted to Holsey: “It’s been an ho­n­our to serve our na­tion, the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and sup­port and de­fend the Con­sti­tu­tion for over 37 years. Ef­fec­tive, 12 De­cem­ber 2025, I will re­tire from the US Navy.”

Hegseth, in a sep­a­rate post, did not dis­close the rea­son for Holsey’s de­par­ture but thanked him for his 37 years of ser­vice.

The Unit­ed States has so far car­ried out five drone strikes on ves­sels in the Caribbean Sea, killing at least 27 peo­ple, it claimed were in­volved in drug and weapons traf­fick­ing.

US au­thor­i­ties have since de­clas­si­fied footage of the op­er­a­tions, re­leas­ing the videos on Truth So­cial, X, and oth­er so­cial me­dia plat­forms.