The US military will begin ground strikes on drug trafficking targets throughout Latin America, President Donald Trump said.
"We've cut off 96% of the drug supply by water and now we're starting (similar actions for supply - ed.) by land. By land, it's (drug delivery - ed.) much easier, and it (ground strikes - ed.) will start happening," Bloomberg quoted Trump as saying to the journalist.
At the same time, he refused to provide details on when and where the escalation of his military campaign, which initially targeted Venezuelan ships that Washington said were transporting drugs to the United States, would begin.
The President had previously warned that the US would strike ground targets in Venezuela. Trump's statements were seen as a pressure campaign against President Nicolas Maduro, for whose capture a reward was announced, but he now insists that targeted attacks could also affect other countries in the region.
"This does not have to happen in Venezuela," Trump said at a briefing, adding that "people who bring drugs into our country are targets."
According to the head of the White House, if deaths from drug overdoses were taken into account in the same way as combat losses on the front, it would be "a war like no other."
Since the beginning of September, the US military, on the orders of Trump, has been conducting a military campaign against alleged drug trafficking ships in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. Dozens of people have been killed as a result of the strikes. Some of those who survived after being rescued from the water were deported to Latin American countries.
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