Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has opened a diplomatic firefight with Washington, accusing the United States of killing Colombian citizens during recent strikes on suspected “narco-boats” in the Caribbean. Petro said the most recent vessel destroyed by U.S. forces was “Colombian with Colombian citizens inside,” an allegation the White House blasted as “baseless” and urged him to retract. The charge lands as the U.S. acknowledges at least four boat strikes since early September, with 21 people reported killed, and as regional governments question whether the operations violate international law.
Responding to a post from Senator Adam Schiff, who led a War Powers effort to curb the boat strikes, Petro declared that a “new war scenario” had opened in the Caribbean and urged families of the dead to come forward. He offered no names or documents, and U.S. officials have not identified those killed, but his claim sharpened tensions with a blunt implication that American forces may have killed Colombian nationals at sea.
A White House statement said it “looks forward to President Petro publicly retracting his baseless and reprehensible statement,” even as the administration continued to justify the maritime campaign as a strike on drug traffickers operating in international waters. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently described one such target as a “narco-trafficking vessel” off Venezuela, though neither the Pentagon nor the White House has released passenger identities or details tying the dead to drug networks.
A resolution from Senators Schiff and Tim Kaine that would have forced President Donald Trump to seek congressional authorization for further strikes narrowly failed on Wednesday, 48–51, after most Republicans lined up behind the White House. Two GOP senators crossed over, and one Democrat opposed the measure, a sign of how unsettled the legal and strategic arguments remain. It was the first congressional test of the campaign and leaves the administration with few immediate constraints.
The United States has framed the operations as part of a broader anti-cartel push and, according to a leaked memo described to lawmakers, has begun treating the fight as a “non-international armed conflict,” a classification that expands asserted wartime powers at sea. Opponents warn that labeling smugglers as enemy fighters invites lethal action even when imminent threats are unclear, and risks dragging neighboring countries into a confrontation they did not authorize.
Speaking in Brussels at the EU Global Gateway Forum, he said he has asked Caribbean foreign ministers to convene over the strikes and tied the U.S. campaign to what he claims are larger motives, from energy politics to regional domination. Venezuelan officials, already denouncing an American naval presence off their coast, have echoed the warning, while the Pentagon has kept operational details close. For now, key facts remain vague, who exactly was on the boats, what rules of engagement governed the shots fired, and what proof the United States holds linking those killed to trafficking groups.
Colombia and the United States cooperate on security and counternarcotics, and both sides say they want that relationship to endure. Yet a campaign that kills two dozen people at sea without transparent after-action reporting is testing that partnership and handing adversaries an easy narrative about U.S. power used with impunity.
