The Colombian guerrilla movement National Liberation Army (ELN, Gebaristas) has denied any involvement in the incident with a vessel that was targeted by the US armed forces in the Caribbean because, according to Washington, it was carrying drugs.

“The National Liberation Army has not and will not acquire any vessel associated with drug trafficking activity, either in the Caribbean or in any other sea, simply because they prohibit it” its authorities, said an ELN statement dated yesterday, made public through social networking sites on Tuesday.

The US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed over the weekend that a speedboat hit by US forces in the Caribbean on Friday belonged to the ELN.

The president of Colombia Gustavo Petro opposes the US strikes against ships in the Caribbean, with dozens of deaths, which have sharply increased the tension in the region, especially between the US and Venezuela. Experts in international law and the law of the sea and defenders of human rights strongly criticize these military operations.

Reacting, the US president Donald Trump accused his Colombian counterpart Petros, without presenting any evidence for the claim, of being “drug lord” and threatened to raise tariffs on goods imported into his country from Colombia and cut off US economic and military aid to Bogotain the context of the so-called war on drugs.