VENEZUELA is ready to defend itself against “warlike aggression” by the United States, the country’s leaders vowed at the weekend after the US military destroyed a fourth alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean.

Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said that not only Venezuela but the wider Caribbean was affected by what US President Donald Trump’s administration has declared to be an “armed conflict” with cartels.

“We see it and feel it, as they murder our countries’ citizens in summary extrajudicial executions,” she said during a conference in the capital Caracas focused on colonialism in the West.

Posting on social media, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted that the “vessel was trafficking narcotics” and those aboard were “narco-terrorists.”

He said the strike had killed four men but offered no details on who they were or what group they belonged to, following the US designation of several Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organisations.

Mr Trump claimed on social media that the boat had been “loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE” and implied that it was “entering American Territory” while off the coast of Venezuela.

President Nicolas Maduro told the Caracas conference that his country was ready to defend itself.

“Venezuela has the right to peace, to sovereignty, to existence, and no empire in this world can take it away,” he said.

“And if it is necessary to move from an unarmed struggle to an armed struggle, this people will do so … Colonialism no more.”

Neighbouring Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro accused the US of committing “murder” and urged the victims’ families to “join forces.”

Posting on X, he said: “There are no narco-terrorists on the boats. Drug traffickers live in the US, Europe and Dubai. On that boat are poor Caribbean youth.”