KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar has ex­pressed strong sup­port for the Unit­ed States’ strike on a Venezuela-based drug ves­sel, say­ing she has “no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers” and that the US mil­i­tary should “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.”

“I, along with most of the coun­try, am hap­py that the US naval de­ploy­ment is hav­ing suc­cess in their mis­sion,” the Prime Min­is­ter said in a What­sApp mes­sage.

“Il­le­gal­ly traf­ficked drugs and arms have caused death and de­struc­tion in our so­ci­ety over the last twen­ty-five years. Our coun­try has been rav­aged by bloody vi­o­lence and ad­dic­tion be­cause of the greed of the car­tels. The slaugh­ter of our peo­ple is fu­elled by evil car­tel traf­fick­ers. The pain and suf­fer­ing the car­tels have in­flict­ed on our na­tion is im­mense.”

She added that re­strict­ing il­le­gal guns, drugs, and hu­man traf­fick­ing “will de­crease the vi­o­lence in the re­gion and in par­tic­u­lar our coun­try,” and asked for di­vine pro­tec­tion for US mil­i­tary per­son­nel en­gaged in the in­ter­dic­tion mis­sion.

"May god bless and pro­tect the mem­bers of the US mil­i­tary who are en­gaged in the drug in­ter­dic­tion mis­sion. Their ef­forts will save many lives in our coun­try and the re­gion," she said.

The state­ment fol­lows US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s an­nounce­ment of a strike on a drug-car­ry­ing boat in the south­ern Caribbean. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as a “lethal strike” against a ves­sel op­er­at­ed by a des­ig­nat­ed nar­co-ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Trump re­leased a video on Truth So­cial of the US mil­i­tary strike against the boat that had left Venezuela. The ad­min­is­tra­tion says it was a drug car­ry­ing boat, with Trump adding that they were “pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied Tren de Aragua nar­co-ter­ror­ists” and that they were “head­ing to the Unit­ed States. The strike re­sult­ed in 11 ter­ror­ists killed in ac­tion.”