WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military said it carried out another strike Monday on a boat accused of trafficking drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people.
The campaign of attacks on vessels that the Trump administration says are trafficking drugs in Latin American waters has persisted for more than seven months and continues even as the military has been preoccupied for more than six weeks with the Iran war.
It was the second day in a row that U.S. Southern Command announced a strike on social media. It said Sunday that it blew up two boats in the eastern Pacific on Saturday, killing a total of five people and leaving one survivor. It was not immediately clear what happened to that person.
With the latest attack Monday, at least 170 people have been killed in the boat strikes since the effort began in early September, months ahead of the U.S. raid in January that captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He was brought to New York to face drug trafficking charges and has pleaded not guilty.
U.S. Southern Command repeated previous statements by saying it had targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It posted a video on X showing a small boat floating in the water before a huge blast hits it and smoke is seen pouring from the vessel.
President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and fatal overdoses claiming American lives. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”
Trump on Monday appeared to reference the tactic of boat strikes in Latin America while issuing new threats against Tehran as a blockade of Iranian ports took effect.
“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The Pentagon is seen from an airplane, Tuesday, April 7, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
NEW YORK (AP) — Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has apologized for “harmful” social media posts she made as a teenager, responding publicly after a conservative news outlet combed through her online profiles and resurfaced material, including a post in which she used an anti-gay slur.
In an interview with the arts website Hyperallergic, Duwaji, an illustrator, said she felt “a lot of shame being confronted with language I used that is so harmful to others," adding “being 15 doesn't excuse it."
"I’ve read and seen a lot of what others have had to say in response, and I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry," she said in the interview, published Wednesday, in response to a question about adjusting to life as a public figure.
Duwaji did not specify which comments she was referring to, nor did she address other, more recent social media activity regarding Israel that has attracted heavy scrutiny as Mamdani tries to ease concerns among some in the city's Jewish community over his own criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
Last month, The Washington Free Beacon reported on years of Duwaji’s online activity across a handful of social media platforms, finding she had shared posts praising female Palestinian militants who participated in plane hijackings and bombings in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 2015, she shared a post in which someone else wrote that Tel Aviv was occupying Palestinian land and “shouldn’t exist.”
Duwaji also once used a racial slur for Black people while affectionately addressing a friend and used an abbreviated slur for gay people in 2013.
The mayor has previously said his wife is a “private person” who does not hold a formal position in City Hall. Asked Thursday about which specific posts his wife regretted, Mamdani demurred.
“She shared some of her reflections in this interview. I won’t add much to them, what I will say, however, is that she is someone of incredible integrity,” Mamdani told reporters.
He added that questions about Duwaji's social media activity were “part and parcel” of his own choice to run for mayor, “a decision that has ramifications for those that I love.”
Separately, Duwaji has also come under criticism for liking an Instagram post that appeared to cheer Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 surprise attack on Israel. The Free Beacon has also reported that Duwaji provided an illustration for an essay by an author who described the Oct. 7 attack as “spectacular" and had called Jewish Israelis “rootless soulless ghouls.”
Mamdani has previously said his wife had been commissioned to illustrate an excerpt of a book by a third party, and said she had never engaged or met with the author, and that Duwaji had not seen the author's previous comments. He called the author's rhetoric “patently unacceptable” and “reprehensible.”
AP writer Jake Offenhartz contributed
FILE - Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, right, and his wife, Rama Duwaji, react to supporters during an election night watch party, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
