Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounced this Sunday the discovery of several lifeless bodies floating in the sea off the coast of the Colombian department of La Guajira and asked the Forensic Medicine Institute to investigate and establish their identities, stating that they could correspond to victims of a military attack in the Caribbean.
Residents have found several mutilated bodies on beaches in the region, washed ashore by the tide. In a video posted on Petro’s account on X, references are made to testimonies from local residents who say that “the bombings and explosions in the Caribbean, those that have occurred here, can be heard.”
Following these statements, it is added that “these deaths (…) would be the result of those bombings, and it is presumed that they were Colombian citizens, who were killed without due process, an extrajudicial execution by the U.S. bombing.”
In the post, the president asks the Forensic Medicine Institute to “establish identities and coordinate with the Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office” and adds that “they may have been killed by bombing at sea.”
In statements to local media, residents of the region have confirmed the appearance of at least three bodies on the coast. In addition to reporting hearing the explosions, they said they saw ships from the Southern Command weeks ago.
Last Tuesday, the family of Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian fisherman killed in an attack in the Caribbean Sea in September, filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against the United States government, alleging that it was an extrajudicial execution.
According to the complaint, “On September 15, 2025, U.S. military forces bombed the boat of Alejandro Carranza Medina (…), which was sailing in the Caribbean from the coast of Colombia. Carranza died during this bombing.”
From the beginning of September until December 4, U.S. military attacks in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific against 22 vessels—the number acknowledged by the Pentagon—have left at least 87 dead. The Pentagon and the White House allege that they were drug traffickers, but without presenting evidence of this claim, and have generated increasing scrutiny in Congress regarding the legality of these actions.
Only in the cases of Carranza (killed) and the Colombian Jeison Obando Pérez and the Ecuadorian Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila, survivors of an attack on October 16, have the identities of the victims of these operations been revealed. These operations were part of Car, presented by the Trump Administration as a campaign against drug trafficking.
Operation Southern Spear, seen as a show of military force by the Donald Trump administration, has coincided with an intensification of threats and hostile rhetoric against Venezuela and includes a dozen ships—among them the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford—dozens of fighter jets, and thousands of soldiers.
IMAGE CREDIT: President Gustavo Petro has denounced the attacks by U.S. military forces on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific as extrajudicial executions. (Photo: EFE)
[ SOURCE: teleSUR ]
