war

Mohammed Zakaria had not slept in two days when the news came that el-Fasher, his hometown, had fallen to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The Sudanese video journalist and human rights activist had been monitoring the deteriorating situation from Kampala, Uganda, watching as the paramilitary seized the North Darfur governor’s office in the city on Friday, edging closer to taking control of all of it.

He feared the worst.

For Zakaria, the “nightmare” scenario is intensely personal. Searching through social media after the city’s fall, he discovered footage posted on Facebook by RSF soldiers celebrating, standing over dead bodies. He recognised three of his uncles among the dead.

“They are celebrating by killing them,” he said.

He said another uncle’s Facebook profile photo had been changed to an image of an RSF fighter, a chilling message about his possible fate.

“We don’t know where he is … we’re really scared for him,” he said.

The fall of el-Fasher

The city fell to the RSF on Sunday after an 18-month siege, the Sudanese army confirming its withdrawal from what was its last outpost in the Darfur region, held for months by the resolve of fighters holed up there.

The RSF’s capture of el-Fasher gives the paramilitary control over all five state capitals in Darfur, marking a significant turning point in Sudan’s civil war.

El-Fasher endured one of the longest urban sieges in modern warfare this century. The RSF began encircling it in May 2024 and intensified its assaults after being driven from the capital, Khartoum, by the army in March.

What followed its fall has been described by international observers as a massacre on an unprecedented scale, with satellite imagery and social media footage pointing to mass atrocities by RSF fighters, reportedly along ethnic lines.

“We have been talking about this for more than a year. We knew this would happen,” Zakaria told Al Jazeera, his voice breaking.

Sarra Majdoub, a former UN Security Council expert on Sudan, told Al Jazeera observers were warning for months of the city’s fall, like other major urban areas in Darfur that were captured by the RSF, but “they surprisingly held on for a really long time”.

A communications blackout has all but cut off connection from the city, leaving those with loved ones there in a state of anxious uncertainty.

An estimated 260,000 civilians remained trapped in the city when it fell, half of them children.

The Sudan Doctors Network said a “heinous massacre” had taken place in el-Fasher, while the Joint Forces, a coalition of armed groups allied with the Sudanese army, said 2,000 people had been executed. The UN said it documented 1,350 deaths.

Reports of atrocities

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which monitors the war in Sudan, reported Tuesday that satellite imagery revealed evidence consistent with mass killings, including what seem to be visible pools of blood and clusters of corpses.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, told a media briefing on Tuesday that the killings were “only comparable to Rwanda-style killings”, referring to the 1994 Tutsi genocide in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed in weeks.

As early as October 2, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned of the risk of “large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities”, calling for immediate action to prevent it.

Social media footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency after the city’s fall showed many instances of RSF fighters carrying out summary executions of civilians. In one video, an RSF commander bragged that he had killed 2,000 people.

In a statement on Monday, the RSF said it was committed to “protecting civilians”.

Majdoub told Al Jazeera that the voyeuristic nature of the videos recorded by RSF fighters was among the “most disturbing elements” of the violence.

She recalled that fighters filming abuses had been seen before in places such as el-Geneina in West Darfur and Gezira state, “but el-Fasher has been different, their violence is more exaggerated.”

“It is very painful,” Zakaria said, “finding videos in social media, and then you find that you know this person, who is a friend, or a distant relative, or uncle, surrounded by RSF fighters.

“This is a reality now for many people”.

He remains unable to locate dozens of friends and relatives.

Among them is Dr Mudathir Ibrahim Suleiman, medical director of Saudi Hospital, whom Zakaria last spoke to early Saturday morning, hours before the RSF took the city.

“He told me he would escape with his father and relatives,” Zakaria said. “Until now, I didn’t hear anything … We found that some doctors reached Tawila, but Dr Mudathir is not among them.”

Darfur’s governor, Minni Minnawi, said on Wednesday the RSF had committed a massacre in the Saudi Hospital, killing 460 people. He also posted footage on X showing a summary execution.

Residents who spoke to Al Jazeera in the weeks before the final offensive described daily bombardments and periodic drone strikes. People dug trenches to hide in at dawn as shelling began, sometimes remaining underground for hours.

The United Nations migration agency reported that more than 26,000 people fled the fighting since Sunday, either heading to the outskirts of the city or attempting the dangerous journey to Tawila, 70km (43.5 miles) to the west.

‘Genocide is happening now’

Zakaria left el-Fasher in June 2024, during the siege, making the perilous journey through South Sudan to Uganda after his house was shelled and he witnessed a deadly attack that killed seven people, including women and children, near his grandfather’s home.

“It was like the hardest decision I have made in my life, to leave my city,” he said.

From Kampala, he continued monitoring the violence and advocating for people.

El-Fasher had appealed for intervention for more than 17 months, he said, while humanitarian organisations operated in Tawila, just three hours away by car.

“The time has passed for actions. The genocide is happening now,” he said.

Zakaria says more than 100 people he knows remain unaccounted for in el-Fasher.

He continues searching social media and calling contacts, hoping for information.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Both Russia and Ukraine depend on Chinese-made components for drones, jamming systems and the fibre optic cable attached to the drones to make them immune to jamming.

If Beijing wanted to end the Russia-Ukraine war, it could do so promptly and singlehandedly by banning the imports, according to one of the pioneers of drone warfare in Ukraine.

“Almost each component is made in China,” Andrey Pronin, who runs a drone school in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera. “China could cut off their side – or ours.”

Beijing supplies Moscow with four-fifths of drones, electronic chips and other dual-purpose goods that end up on the front line, keeping the Russian war machine rolling, according to Ukrainian intelligence.

Ukraine is trying to wean off its reliance on Chinese drones amid Beijing’s restriction of exports, but they still account for a staggering 97 percent of components, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank in Washington, DC.

United States President Donald Trump hopes that Thursday’s summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping can change that.

“I’d like China to help us out with Russia,” Trump said on October 24, two days after cancelling his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and slapping sanctions on two Russian oil companies.

Trump is scheduled to meet with Xi in South Korea’s Seoul on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Their last meeting was held in 2019, in Japan’s Osaka.

Zelenskyy hopes meeting will ‘help us all’

Beijing, which has claimed it is officially neutral regarding the war, denies direct involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But it plays a role as Moscow’s main political and economic backer.

As Beijing seeks to “return” Taiwan to its fold, Moscow is understood by observers to be sharing with the Chinese military information on the use of drones, the vulnerabilities of Western-supplied weaponry and the management of airborne troops.

Meanwhile, amid mounting Western sanctions, Beijing is buying discounted oil, gas and raw materials, paying Moscow tens of billions of dollars a year.

That is the weak spot Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants Trump to target in talks with Xi.

If Trump manages to “find an understanding with China about the reduction of Russian energy exports”, he said on Monday, “I think it’ll help us all.”

But Trump’s latest Russia sanctions slapped on state-owned oil giant Rosneft and the private Lukoil company could inadvertently strengthen Beijing.

Both companies will be forced to sell their foreign subsidiaries and diminish their role in international projects – namely, in ex-Soviet Central Asia and several African nations, where their place may be taken by Chinese companies.

According to Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank, Xi’s role in ending the war is pivotal.

“Without the financial support, without the economic cooperation with China, Russia can’t continue the war,” he said. “China is Russia’s main economic resource.

“Had [Beijing] wanted to end this war, it would have achieved it very fast,” he added. “China’s harsh position in closed-door, non-public talks with Putin would be enough.”

However, Beijing has “no inclination or interest in making a gift to Trump”, said Fesenko.

During his first presidency, ties with Beijing spiralled as the White House sought to curb China’s growing global clout and its access to Western technologies.

China and the US have introduced tariffs on mutual exports as Beijing threatened to cut off the trade in critical minerals, and Washington promised to curb the transfer of technologies. The Russia-Ukraine war is unlikely to dominate the summit, as Trump and Xi have bigger fish to fry as their nations now face a trade war.

‘Freezing the war’

At the same time, Beijing has been boosting its economic clout in Eastern Europe, Moscow’s former stomping ground, investing heavily in new infrastructure.

“The escalation of the war, its spread to Europe, is something that contradicts China’s interests,” Fesenko said.

However, Washington and Beijing may want to keep the war simmering or frozen without letting Moscow or Kyiv win a decisive victory, argued Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych.

Washington is not going to benefit from Russia’s “overwhelming victory” as the Kremlin will undoubtedly seek the role of a “third global leader”, he said.

But neither Beijing or Washington could benefit from Russia’s full defeat, as China is concerned by destabilisation near its northern and northwestern borders.

“Washington is active about freezing the war,” Tyshkevych said. “I won’t be surprised if Beijing will be active in the same direction.”

If frozen, there are fears that the war could reignite when Russia recovers economically and accumulates enough resources.

To avoid that, Kyiv would look to building new or strengthening existing partnerships, especially with the European Union and its individual members, as well as countries such as Turkiye and Pakistan that both have cordial ties with Beijing.

And Putin still has plenty of incentives to offer to Trump.

There is a reported proposal to create infrastructure for the Arctic sea route that will shorten the delivery of goods from Asia to Europe by weeks.

Moscow also considered a joint project to sell Russian natural gas to Europe, develop oil and gas fields in Russia’s Far East, and supply rare earths that are crucial for US tech giants.

In a post-war environment, Putin may also propose Russia’s expertise in processing spent nuclear fuel from US power stations – and come up with nuclear security deals, including non-proliferation.

Non-proliferation “is the only field where Russia is ‘equal’ to the United States,” Tyshkevych said.

Since April 2023, more than 12 million people have been displaced, nearly 9 million inside Sudan and over 3 million across borders. The United Nations now identifies Sudan as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 25 million people facing acute food insecurity and famine conditions already recorded in multiple areas.

These are not statistics; they are markers of systemic collapse. Mass graves, torched health facilities, and emptied towns tell the story. UN officials and independent human rights bodies have documented that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias committed genocide in Darfur, a finding echoed by the recent fall of El Fasher to RSF forces and the disturbing images that followed, underscoring the scale of brutality: civilians hunted in displacement camps, aid workers killed, humanitarian corridors severed. Each captured city tightens the noose on civilians and erodes any remaining space for lifesaving assistance.

The $4.2 billion required under the 2025 Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan remains largely unfunded. Agencies, including the WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, and IOM, warn of an imminent operational collapse. Inaction is not neutral — it accelerates mass hunger, disease, and death. Sudan’s implosion will intensify displacement, fuel illicit economies, exacerbate extremist recruitment, and heighten volatility in food and fuel supplies. The outcome is predictable: expanded violence, deteriorating governance, and prolonged economic decline across West and Central Africa.

This crisis does not end at Sudan’s borders. It reverberates across a Sahel already destabilised by insurgency, climate shocks, and hollowed-out state institutions. Since 2020, a succession of coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger has entrenched military rule and normalised authoritarian recourse. Weak governance and porous borders transform humanitarian emergencies into regional security threats.

The international response must shift from caution to conviction:

• Close the funding gap immediately. Multiyear, flexible financing is essential. Underfunding today guarantees higher security and social costs tomorrow.

• Enforce accountability. Genocide determinations and credible atrocity reports demand criminal investigations, targeted sanctions, and civilian protection mechanisms. Impunity is a policy choice — and one that invites repetition.

• Reform and empower Africa’s institutions. The African Union must evolve from a consultative platform into a body capable of deterrence. Continent-wide resilience requires real incentives and penalties for unconstitutional rule, as well as rapid protection capacity. AU, ECOWAS, and the UN should align political mediation, enforcement tools, and governance support to reduce the appeal of coups masquerading as solutions.

The AU’s intervention is both urgent and crucial for the continent’s stability. Africa cannot afford perpetual crises while its people are uprooted and its natural wealth siphoned off. Sudan is a warning. The Sahel is the echo. Failure to act decisively will cement a trajectory of conflict, authoritarian drift, and economic paralysis. Accountability, protection, and reform are not aspirations; they are minimum requirements for continental stability.

Hamed and Rida Aliwa have taken up the responsibility of raising dozens of their grandchildren after they lost five of their sons because of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab says satellite images appear to show mass killings in Sudan’s western city of el-Fasher.

The fall of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has resulted in mass killings by the group, according to an analysis of satellite imagery viewed by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

The RSF had laid siege to el-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur in western Sudan, for more than a year and a half. Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announced the withdrawal of his forces from their last stronghold in the wider Darfur region late on Monday, a day after the paramilitary RSF seized control of the main Sudanese army base in el-Fasher and declared victory there.

The fall of el-Fasher has “resulted in the carpet-bombing of large swaths of the city by Sudan Armed Forces, an unknown number of civilian casualties caused by both sides, and almost 15 months of IPC-5 Famine conditions in areas caused by RSF’s siege of the city”, the HRL report said. The HRL determined this by reviewing satellite imagery and open source and remote sensing data from Monday.

“El-Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution,” the HRL said.

The RSF has long been accused of targeting non-Arab communities in Darfur, and the HRL, aid groups and experts have previously warned of mass violence and displacement if el-Fasher fell.

HRL’s report showed images containing clusters of objects and ground discolouration that it believes to be evidence of human bodies. The HRL appears to back up other accounts from aid groups that reported chaotic scenes on the ground, including killings, arrests and attacks on hospitals.

“The actions by RSF presented in this report may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity (CAH) and may rise to the level of genocide,” the report said.

The war in Sudan between the RSF and the SAF began on April 15, 2023 and has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands killed and more than 12 million people displaced. There are also fears that Sudan could once again split, more than a decade after the creation of South Sudan.

Darfur is an RSF stronghold while the SAF controls the Sudanese capital Khartoum, as well as the north and east of the country. The RSF advance comes shortly after talks last week by the Quad – a bloc of nations comprised of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – which laid out a roadmap aimed at ending the war in Sudan.

Here are the key events from day 1,342 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, October 28, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian attacks on Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhia killed a 44-year-old man and wounded several others, Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Monday, as the death toll from other assaults on Sunday continued to rise.
• Ukrainian officials said the attacks on Sunday killed two people in the eastern Donetsk region and a 69-year-old man in the northern Sumy region. Fifteen others, including two children, were wounded in Sumy, police there said.
• Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) claimed the killing of Lieutenant Vasily Marzoev, the son of a Russian general, using a guided aerial bomb. Al Jazeera could not independently verify the report.
• A Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian minibus in the village of Pogar in the Bryansk region killed the driver and injured five passengers, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported, citing Governor Alexander Bogomaz.

• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces seized the Ukrainian village of Yehorivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region. However, the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform reported that Ukrainian forces had cleared Russian troops out of the village. Neither claim could be independently verified by Al Jazeera.

• Russia’s Defence Ministry also said its forces captured the villages of Novomykolaivka and Privolnoye in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, according to TASS.

• TASS also reported the ministry as saying that Russian forces shot down 350 Ukrainian drones, two guided missiles and seven rocket launchers in the past 24 hours.
• A report by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine found that Russian drone attacks were used as “part of a coordinated policy to drive out civilians from [Ukrainian] territories”, amounting “to the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population”.
• The report described civilians who were chased over long distances by drones with mounted cameras, and sometimes attacked with fire bombs or explosives while seeking shelter.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States President Donald Trump said that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, should end the war in Ukraine instead of testing nuclear-powered missiles, adding that Washington had a nuclear submarine positioned off Russia’s coast. The comments came a day after Putin said that Russia had successfully tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile.

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was nothing in the test of the missile that should strain relations with Washington, and that Russia was guided by its own national interests.
• Norway’s military intelligence service said that Russia’s test of the Burevestnik missile was launched from the Barents Sea archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the US-based Axios news outlet that Kyiv and its allies have agreed to work on a ceasefire plan in the coming 10 days, following Trump’s recent proposal to stop the war at the current lines.
• Putin signed a law on Monday terminating an already defunct plutonium disposal agreement with the US that aimed to prevent both sides from building more nuclear weapons.

• North Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son Hui met Putin at the Kremlin on Monday to discuss strengthening cooperation with Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Tuesday.

• “Many future projects to constantly strengthen and develop” the bilateral relationship were discussed during the meeting, KCNA said, with Choe also conveying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “brotherly regard” to Putin. The Russian leader, in turn, asked Choe to tell Kim that “everything was going to plan” during the meeting.

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will discuss US sanctions on Russian oil companies, among other issues, when he meets Trump in Washington next week, Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said on Monday.

Regional security

• Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene said on Monday that her country will begin to shoot down smuggler balloons crossing the border from Belarus, a close Russian ally, after the balloons repeatedly interrupted the Baltic nation’s air traffic.
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that helium balloons over Lithuania were a “provocation” and “a hybrid threat”, adding in a post on X that the balloons are another reason to accelerate the European Union’s Eastern Flank Watch and European drone defence initiatives.

Weapons

• Ukraine’s military intelligence published a list detailing the origins of 68 foreign components used in Russian missiles and other weapons, which it says came from China, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the US.

In recent months, a series of videos surfaced on Donald Trump’s social-media platform, showing what appeared to be drone footage of small vessels exploding somewhere in the Caribbean. The clips were accompanied by triumphant statements from the former president, who claimed that U.S. forces had struck “drug boats” operated by Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua cartel as they ferried narcotics toward the American coastline. Within hours of the first announcement, officials confirmed that “multiple interdictions” had taken place, that several suspected traffickers were dead, and that survivors were in custody.

For Washington, the operation was presented as a new frontier in counter-narcotics self-defense. For much of Latin America, it looked alarmingly like extrajudicial warfare. Colombia’s president protested that one of the destroyed boats had been Colombian, carrying his own citizens. Caracas called the attacks “acts of piracy.” And legal scholars, both in the United States and abroad, began to question not only the strikes’ legitimacy under international law but also who, exactly, had carried them out.

The Law of the Sea Meets the War on Drugs

The United States is not a signatory to the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, yet successive administrations have claimed to act “in a manner consistent” with its provisions. Under that framework, ships on the high seas enjoy freedom of navigation. Interference is allowed only in narrow cases such as piracy, slavery, or “hot pursuit” when a vessel flees territorial waters after violating a state’s laws. The deliberate destruction of a boat on the open ocean—without proof of an immediate threat—sits uneasily within those boundaries.

“Force can be used to stop a boat,” observed Luke Moffett of Queen’s University Belfast, “but it must be reasonable and necessary in self-defense where there is an immediate threat of serious injury or loss of life.” Nothing in the public record suggests the crews of these vessels fired upon U.S. assets. The claim of self-defense, therefore, stretches maritime law close to breaking point.

International law’s broader prohibition on the use of force, codified in Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, is equally uncompromising. Only an armed attack, or an imminent threat of one, allows a state to respond with force in self-defense. Trump’s officials insist that Tren de Aragua constitutes a transnational terrorist organization waging “irregular warfare” against the United States. Yet, as Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin argues, “Labelling traffickers ‘narco-terrorists’ does not transform them into lawful military targets. The United States is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or with this criminal organization.”

Nonetheless, a leaked memorandum reportedly informed Congress that the administration had determined the U.S. to be in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels—a remarkable claim that effectively militarizes the war on drugs. If accurate, it would mean Washington has unilaterally extended the legal geography of war to the Caribbean, with traffickers recast as enemy combatants rather than criminals.

Domestic Authority and the Elastic Presidency

The constitutional footing for these operations is no clearer. The power to declare war resides with Congress, but Article II designates the president commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Since 2001, successive presidents have leaned on the Authorization for Use of Military Force—passed in the wake of 9/11—to justify counter-terror operations across the globe. That statute, intended to target al-Qaeda and its affiliates, has been stretched from Yemen to the Sahel. Extending it to Venezuelan cartels represents another act of legal contortion.

Rumen Cholakov, a constitutional scholar at King’s College London, suggests that rebranding cartels as “narco-terrorists” may be a deliberate attempt to fold them into the AUMF’s reach. But it remains uncertain whether Congress ever envisaged such an interpretation. Nor has the White House explained whether the War Powers Resolution’s requirement of prior consultation with lawmakers was honored before the first missile struck.

The Pentagon, asked to disclose its legal rationale, declined. The opacity has fuelled speculation that the operations were not conducted solely by uniformed military forces at all, but by an entirely different arm of the American state—one that operates in deeper shadows.

The “Third Option”: Covert Power and the CIA’s Ground Branch

In October, Trump confirmed that he had authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to “conduct covert operations in Venezuela.” The statement was brief, but within the intelligence world it carried enormous significance. For decades, the CIA’s Special Activities Center—once known as the Special Activities Division—has been Washington’s chosen instrument for deniable action. Its paramilitary component, the Ground Branch, recruits largely from elite special-operations units and specializes in missions that the U.S. government cannot publicly own: sabotage, targeted strikes, and the training of proxy forces.

These operations fall under Title 50 of the U.S. Code, which governs intelligence activities rather than military ones. By law, the president must issue a classified “finding” declaring that the action is necessary to advance foreign-policy objectives and must notify congressional intelligence leaders. Crucially, Title 50 operations are designed so that “the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.”

That distinction—between covert and merely secret—sets Title 50 apart from the military’s Title 10 authority. Traditional special-operations forces under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operate as uniformed combatants in overt or clandestine missions authorized under defense law. Their actions are governed by the law of armed conflict, subject to military oversight, and, at least in theory, open to public accountability. CIA paramilitaries, by contrast, function outside those rules. They wear no uniforms, deny official affiliation, and are overseen not by the Pentagon but by the White House and select members of Congress.

Since 9/11, the line separating the two worlds has blurred. Joint task forces have fused intelligence officers and military commandos under hybrid authorities, allowing presidents to act quickly and quietly without triggering the political friction of formal war powers. The “drug boat” strikes appear to be the latest iteration of that model: part counter-narcotics, part counter-terrorism, and part covert action.

A Legal Twilight Zone

If CIA paramilitary officers were indeed involved, the implications are profound. A covert maritime campaign authorized under Title 50 would have required a presidential finding and congressional notification, but those documents remain classified. Conducting lethal operations at sea through the intelligence apparatus—rather than under military or law-enforcement authority—creates a twilight zone of accountability.

The law of armed conflict applies only when a genuine armed conflict exists; human rights law governs peacetime use of force. Covert paramilitary strikes sit uneasily between the two. They may infringe the sovereignty of other states without ever triggering a formal act of war, and they obscure responsibility by design. Survivors of the October strike—a Colombian and an Ecuadorian now detained by U.S. authorities—exist in a legal limbo, neither civilian nor combatant.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, professor at Notre Dame Law School, calls the rationale “utterly unconvincing.” No credible facts, she argues, justify treating these actions as lawful self-defense. “The only relevant law for peace is international law—that is, the law of treaties, human rights, and statehood.”

The Price of Secrecy

Covert action was conceived as a tool for influence and sabotage during the Cold War, not as an instrument of maritime interdiction. Applying it to counter-narcotics missions risks collapsing the boundary between espionage and war. Oversight mechanisms designed for covert influence operations struggle to accommodate lethal paramilitary campaigns. Only a handful of legislators—the so-called “Gang of Eight”—receive full briefings, and judicial review is virtually nonexistent. In practice, the president’s signature on a secret finding becomes the sole check on executive power.

The “drug boat” operations thus reveal how the United States’ shadow-war architecture has evolved since 9/11. The Special Activities Center, once reserved for coups and clandestine support to insurgents, now appears to function as an offshore strike arm for missions the military cannot legally or politically conduct. The public framing—protecting Americans from narcotics smuggling—masks a far broader assertion of authority: the right to employ lethal force anywhere, against anyone, without declaration or disclosure.

War Without War

Trump’s supporters hail the strikes as decisive. His critics see a dangerous precedent—a campaign that bypasses Congress, ignores international law, and blurs the line between defense and vigilantism. The tension runs deeper than partisanship. It touches the central question of modern U.S. power: who decides when America is at war?

The CIA’s motto for its paramilitary wing, Tertia Optio—the “third option”—was meant to describe a choice between diplomacy and open war. Yet as that option expands into an instrument of regular policy, it threatens to eclipse both. When covert action becomes a substitute for law, secrecy replaces accountability, and deniability becomes the new face of sovereignty.

Whether these “drug boats” carried cocaine or simply unlucky sailors may never be known. What is certain is that the legal boundaries of America’s global operations are eroding at sea. The United States may claim it is defending itself; international law may call it aggression. In that unresolved space—the realm of the third option—the world’s most powerful democracy is waging a war it will not name.

For the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a NATO member has formally invoked Article 4 of the alliance’s founding treaty after a major airspace breach. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna tells Talk to Al Jazeera why repeated Russian provocations are more than isolated incidents – they’re a test of NATO’s credibility. As United States President Donald Trump questions the value of collective defence, Tsahkna warns that Europe’s security consensus is fraying and hesitation could invite danger.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in the Malaysian capital against the visit of US President Donald Trump. They accuse him of complicity in genocide over the Gaza war.

Hundreds gather to express opposition to US president’s attendance at ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have held demonstrations opposing United States President Donald Trump’s visit to Malaysia for the ASEAN summit.

Protesters gathered in Kuala Lumpur’s Independence Square and the Ampang Park area of the city in separate demonstrations on Sunday morning and evening to oppose Trump’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Trump was in Kuala Lumpur to attend the 47th ASEAN summit, where he oversaw the signing of a ceasefire deal between Cambodia and Thailand and announced a number of trade deals.

In Independence Square, protesters wearing keffiyehs braved the midday sun while chanting “Free, Free Palestine”.

Asma Hanim Mahoud said she had travelled 300km (185 miles) from the state of Kelantan in northeast Malaysia to attend the protest and another demonstration on Friday in front of the US embassy.

“People who have a conscience know that Trump is a genocide enabler. Without him, Israel cannot kill all the children and people in Gaza,” she told Al Jazeera.

“It’s not rocket science.”

Mahoud was dismayed that the morning protest had been moved by authorities from Ampang Park, close to the venue of the ASEAN summit, where protests earlier in the week had taken place.

Police said they had expected between 1,000 and 1,500 protesters at the anti-Trump rally on Sunday, according to Malaysia’s Bernama news agency.

The turnout, while much lower, drew from a diverse swath of Malaysian society.

Choo Chon Kai, a leader of the Socialist Party of Malaysia, said he was attending the rally to protest US foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

“This is a solidarity rally against US imperialism, as well as solidarity with the people of Palestine and people all over the world who are victims of US imperialism,” Choo told Al Jazeera.

Choo also said he was disappointed the protest had been moved from the vicinity of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, where Trump and other leaders gathered for the summit.

Protesters later gathered at Ampang Park, the original gathering site for the protest, in the evening to demonstrate against the US president’s visit.

“We just want to make a point that we are against the US policies, but unfortunately, our police have been very hostile to the protest and even shut down the area where we were going to protest,” Choo said.

Kuala Lumpur resident Mursihidah, who asked to be referred to by one name, said she and her husband had been attending pro-Palestine demonstrations since 2023.

Mursihidah said protesters should no longer have to take to the streets after more than two years of war.

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement earlier this month – an agreement also overseen by Trump – but violence has continued, with each side accusing the other of breaching the truce.

“I honestly don’t know why we’re still doing this,” she told Al Jazeera.

“This shouldn’t be happening, but somebody has to be their voice. We have to be their voice because they don’t have a voice.”

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has said the United States government is “fabricating” a war against him as Washington sent the world’s biggest warship towards the South American country.

It signals a major escalation of the US’s military presence in the region amid speculation of an attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Maduro said in a national broadcast on Friday night that US President Donald Trump’s administration is “fabricating a new eternal war” as the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, which can host up to 90 aeroplanes and attack helicopters, moves closer to Venezuela.

Trump has accused him, without providing evidence, of being the leader of the organised crime gang Tren de Aragua.

“They are fabricating an extravagant narrative, a vulgar, criminal and totally fake one,” Maduro added. “Venezuela is a country that does not produce cocaine leaves.”

Tren de Aragua, which traces its roots to a Venezuelan prison, is not known for having a big role in global drug trafficking but for its involvement in contract killings, extortion and people smuggling.

Maduro was widely accused of stealing last year’s election in Venezuela, and countries, including the US, have called for him to go.

Tensions are mounting in the region, with Trump saying he has authorised CIA operations in Venezuela and that he is considering ground attacks against alleged drug cartels in the Caribbean country.

Since September 2, US forces have bombed 10 boats, with eight of the attacks occurring in the Caribbean, for their role in allegedly trafficking drugs into the US. At least 43 people have died in the attacks.

United Nations officials and scholars of international law have said that the strikes are in clear violation of US and international law and amount to extrajudicial executions.

Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said Saturday the country is conducting military exercises to protect its coast against any potential “covert operations”.

“We are conducting an exercise that began 72 hours ago, a coastal defence exercise … to protect ourselves not only from large-scale military threats but also to protect ourselves from drug trafficking, terrorist threats and covert operations that aim to destabilise the country internally,” Padrino said.

Venezuelan state television showed images of military personnel deployed in nine coastal states and a member of Maduro’s civilian militia carrying a Russian Igla-S shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile.

“CIA is present not only in Venezuela but everywhere in the world,” Padrino said. “They may deploy countless CIA-affiliated units in covert operations from any part of the nation, but any attempt will fail.”

Since August, Washington has deployed a fleet of eight US Navy ships, 10 F-35 warplanes and a nuclear-powered submarine for anti-drug operations, but Caracas maintains these manoeuvres mask a plan to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Maduro said on Saturday he had started legal proceedings to revoke the citizenship and cancel the passport of opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez, whom he accuses of egging on an invasion.

Lopez, a well-known Venezuelan opposition figure who has been exiled in Spain since 2020, has publicly expressed his support for the deployment of US ships in the Caribbean and attacks on suspected drug trafficking vessels.

The opposition leader reacted on his X account, dismissing the move because “according to the Constitution, no Venezuelan born in Venezuela can have their nationality revoked.” He once more expressed support for a US military deployment and military actions in the country.

Lopez spent more than three years in a military prison after participating in antigovernment protests in 2014. He was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison on charges of “instigation and conspiracy to commit a crime”.

He was later granted house arrest and, after being released by a group of military personnel during a political crisis in Venezuela, left the country in 2020.

In the meantime, the US has also put Colombia’s leadership in its crosshairs.

The US Department of the Treasury slapped sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his family and the South American country’s interior minister, Armando Benedetti.

Friday’s decision marked a significant escalation in the ongoing feud between the left-wing Petro and his US counterpart, the right-wing Trump.

In a statement, the US Treasury accused Petro of failing to rein in Colombia’s cocaine industry and of shielding criminal groups from accountability.

The Treasury cited Petro’s “Total Peace” plan, an initiative designed to bring an end to Colombia’s six-decade-long internal conflict through negotiations with armed rebels and criminal organisations.

Petro, a prolific social media user, quickly shot back that the Treasury’s decision was the culmination of longstanding Republican threats, including from US Senator Bernie Moreno, a critic of his presidency.

Here are the key events from day 1,340 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, October 26, 2025:

Fighting

• Russia launched a drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in the early hours of Sunday, striking residential buildings and wounding at least five people, including two children, according to officials.
• Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine overnight on Saturday killed at least two people and wounded 12 others, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on X. She accused Moscow of trying to “create a humanitarian catastrophe” in her country amid the winter season.
• The Russian attacks on Saturday targeted “critical infrastructure”, the energy grid, a railroad and residential areas in the Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Sumy and other regions, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha wrote in a separate post on X. “Russian terror can and should be stopped,” he said, as he called for “stronger sanctions” against Moscow.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that such attacks intensified Ukraine’s need for Patriot air defence systems. “America, Europe and the G7 countries can help ensure that such attacks no longer threaten lives,” he wrote.
• Ukraine’s Air Force, in a statement on Telegram, said it downed four of nine missiles and 50 of 62 drones launched in the Russian attacks across the country on Saturday.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, said that its forces had downed 121 Ukrainian drones overnight, including seven that were flying towards Moscow.
• Separately, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that Ukrainian forces struck a dam on a reservoir in the border area, causing damage. He warned that the strikes could risk flooding and advised residents of two border settlements to temporarily evacuate.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States President Donald Trump told reporters on board Air Force One, while heading to Asia, that he is “not going to be wasting” his time on meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin until he thinks a deal is in place to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine.
• The Reuters news agency, citing a US official and another person, reported that Trump’s administration is also preparing additional sanctions it could use to target key areas of Russia’s economy if Putin continues to delay ending the war.
• Reuters quoted the US official as saying that Washington would like to see European allies make the next big Russia move, which could be additional sanctions or tariffs.
• Zelenskyy has welcomed the latest US sanctions targeting two of Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, “a strong and much-needed message that aggression will not go unanswered”.
• In a separate statement on Telegram, Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine expects to receive up to 150 Swedish Gripen fighter jets starting next year, hailing the deal as necessary to defend the country.
• Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, however, said in an interview with the US cable broadcaster CNN, that Moscow, Washington and Kyiv are close to a diplomatic solution to end the three-year war.

Defence minister’s warning comes as countries hold talks in Istanbul to consolidate last week’s Doha ceasefire.

Officials from Pakistan and Afghanistan have met in Istanbul for talks on how to ensure a recent ceasefire deal between the two countries holds, with the Pakistani defence minister warning of “open war” should the efforts fail.

The discussions, which began on Saturday and are expected to continue on Sunday, come just days after a truce was brokered in Doha by Qatar and Turkiye to end deadly clashes between the neighbours. The cross-border violence killed dozens of people and injured hundreds more.

“We have the option, if no agreement takes place, we have an open war with them,” Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said from the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot on Saturday.

“But I saw that they want peace,” he added.

Reporting from Istanbul, Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu said the “technical-level talks” in Turkiye are expected “to pave the way for a permanent solution between the two neighbours”.

While Afghanistan’s Deputy Interior Minister Haji Najib is leading his country’s delegation in Turkiye, Pakistan has not given details about its representatives.

On Friday, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the negotiations must address “the menace of terrorism emanating from Afghan soil towards Pakistan”.

Pakistan has accused Afghanistan of harbouring what it calls “terrorist groups”, including the Pakistani Taliban (TPP). Kabul denies the allegation and has blamed Islamabad for violating its sovereignty through military strikes.

Key crossings between the countries remain shut following the recent fighting, with Afghanistan’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimating that traders are losing millions of dollars each day that the closure persists.

Ibraheem Bahiss, an International Crisis Group analyst in Afghanistan, told the AFP news agency that a key topic of discussion during the Istanbul talks would be intelligence-sharing on armed groups.

“For example, Pakistan would give coordinates of where they suspect TTP fighters or commanders are, and instead of carrying out strikes, Afghanistan would be expected to carry out action against them,” he said.

Meanwhile, the ceasefire that was announced in Doha last Sunday continues to hold.

“There has been no major full-scale terrorist attack emanating from Afghan soil in the last two to three days,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said.

“So, the Doha talks and outcome were fruitful. We would like the trend to continue in Istanbul and post-Istanbul.”

The US is deploying the world’s largest aircraft carrier to Latin America as part of the Trump administration’s stated goal of combating drug trafficking. But as regional tensions soar, Venezuela is accusing Washington of trying to overthrow its government.

Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have killed at least four people and wounded several others, local officials say, as Kyiv’s allies push sweeping measures against Moscow as the war nears its four-year mark.

Two people were killed in a ballistic missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and nine were wounded in the overnight attacks, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said on Saturday.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said a blaze erupted in a non-residential building in one location as a result of the attacks, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings.

“Explosions in the capital. The city is under ballistic attack,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a social media post.

In the central-east Dnipropetrovsk region, acting Governor Vladyslav Haivanenko said two people were killed and seven wounded in a Russian attack. He added apartment buildings, private homes, an outbuilding, a shop and at least one vehicle were damaged in the strikes.

One of the victims was an emergency worker, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “One rescuer was killed and another wounded as a result of a repeated missile strike on the Petropavlivska community in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” the ministry said on social media.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia fired nine Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 62 attack drones. Four ballistic missiles and 50 drones were downed, it added.

There was no immediate comment by Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022.

For its part, Russia blamed Ukraine on Saturday for striking a dam on a local reservoir. In a statement on Telegram, Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said repeated strikes on the dam had increased a risk of flooding and advised residents in Shebekino and Bezlyudovka to leave their homes for temporary accommodation.

Belgorod region borders Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region and has previously come under attack by Ukrainian forces.

Overall, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defences had shot down 121 Ukrainian drones over Russia overnight.

Pressuring Putin to end war

The attacks come as Kyiv’s Western allies ratchet up pressure on Russia as the war enters its fourth winter.

The United States and the European Union announced new sweeping sanctions this week on Russian energy aimed at crippling Moscow’s war economy.

US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Russia’s top oil firms, Rosneft and Lukoil, on Wednesday in an effort to pressure Moscow to reach a ceasefire. The EU adopted a new round of sanctions against Russian energy exports on Thursday, banning liquefied natural gas imports.

At a joint news conference in London on Friday after a meeting of the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the sanctions and called for additional pressure on all Russian oil companies, as well as military aid to bolster Ukraine’s long-range missile capabilities.

On Saturday, Zelenskyy said the overnight attacks intensified his country’s need for air defence systems. “It is precisely because of such attacks that we pay special attention to Patriot systems – to be able to protect our cities from this horror. It is critical that partners who possess relevant capability implement what we have discussed in recent days,” he wrote on social media.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would not bend to pressure from the West. “No self-respecting country and no self-respecting people ever decides anything under pressure,” he said, calling the US sanctions an “unfriendly act.”

Putin has called for the complete disarmament of Ukraine and for Russia to keep any territory it has seized during the war. That position seems to be non-negotiable for Ukraine. Trump, who before his return to the White House in January, had boasted of being able to end the war in 24 hours if re-elected – has been unable to make any headway between the two positions.

Plans for an in-person meeting between Trump and Putin fell apart this week after the US president proposed “freezing” the war with a ceasefire along the current front lines.

Despite ongoing disagreements, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, on Friday said he believed a diplomatic solution was close.

Ontario to stop running advertisement featuring voice of US President Ronald Reagan saying that trade tariffs were a bad idea.

The Canadian province of Ontario has said it will pull an anti-tariff advertisement featuring former United States President Ronald Reagan’s voice, which prompted current US leader Donald Trump to scrap all trade talks with Canada.

Trump announced on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he had “terminated” all negotiations with Canada over what he called the “fake” advertising campaign that he said misrepresented fellow Republican President Reagan.

Less than 24 hours later, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said he was suspending the advertisement after talking to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the spiralling row with Washington.

“In speaking with Prime Minister Carney, Ontario will pause its US advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume,” Ford said in a post on X.

Ford added, however, that he had told his team to keep airing the advertisement during two baseball World Series games this weekend, in which Canada’s Toronto Blue Jays will face the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The advertisement used quotes from a radio address on trade that Reagan delivered in 1987, in which he warned against ramifications that he said high tariffs on foreign imports could have on the US economy.

Reagan is heard in the advertisement saying that “high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars”, a quote that matches a transcript of his speech on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s website.

Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses. We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels. I’ve directed my team to keep putting our…

— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 24, 2025

The Ronald Reagan Foundation wrote on X on Thursday that the Ontario government had used “selective audio and video” and that it was reviewing its legal options.

An Al Jazeera analysis of the words used in the advertisement found that while it spliced together different parts of the 1987 speech by Reagan, it also appeared sincere to the meaning of Reagan’s message: that tariffs, if wielded as an economic weapon, must be used only sparingly and for a short time, or they can hurt Americans.

President Trump did not immediately react to the Ontario premier’s decision to pull the advertisement.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told reporters that Trump had made his “extreme displeasure” known and was expected to respond later to news of the advertisement’s impending removal.

A senior US official said that Trump would probably encounter Carney at a dinner on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea on Wednesday.

“They will likely see each other,” the official told the AFP news agency.

In his original social media post announcing the launch of the advertising campaign featuring Reagan’s voice, Ontario’s Ford says, “Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada.”

It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched. 

Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.

Watch our new ad. pic.twitter.com/SgIVC1cqMJ

— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 16, 2025

Prosecutors said the two young defendants planned a ‘sustained campaign of terrorism and sabotage’ backed by Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries.

A British judge has handed lengthy jail sentences to the two young ringleaders of a group who carried out arson attacks in the United Kingdom on behalf of the Russian state-funded private military firm, the Wagner Group.

Prosecutors said on Friday that Dylan Earl, 21, and Jake Reeves, 24, planned “a sustained campaign of terrorism and sabotage on UK soil” with the backing of Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary group, which has been accused of war crimes in zones of conflict around the world, including murder, torture and rape.

Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb handed Earl a 17-year prison sentence, with a further six years on extended licence, for his “leading role” in planning several attacks, including one in March last year in which a London warehouse storing humanitarian aid and Starlink satellite equipment destined for Ukraine was set on fire.

During the trial, prosecutors said the 21-year-old had discussed with his Wagner handler plans to kidnap the cofounder of finance app Revolut and to torch a warehouse in the Czech Republic.

A police search of Earl’s phone uncovered videos of the east London warehouse fire being started, while he was also found to be in contact with Wagner members on the messaging app Telegram.

17 years in prison.

CCTV, phone data and forensic evidence helped convict Dylan Earl, one of five men involved in a Russian-ordered arson attack on a warehouse in Leyton.

The blaze caused around £1 million of damage, including to aid bound for Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/m96hNx6fO2

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) October 24, 2025

Fellow defendant Reeves, 24, was handed 12 years in prison, with an additional year on extended licence, for his role in recruiting other men to take part in the Wagner-backed attacks.

The pair are the first people to be convicted under the UK’s new National Security Act, introduced in 2023 to readapt anti-espionage legislation to counter modern-day threats from foreign powers.

Russian-backed ‘hostile agents’

Earl and Reeves “acted willingly as hostile agents on behalf of the Russian state”, Dominic Murphy, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said in a statement.

“This case is a clear example of an organisation linked to the Russian state using ‘proxies’ – in this case British men – to carry out very serious criminal activity in this country on their behalf,” Murphy said.

“In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in the number of counter-state-threat investigations and the use of ‘proxies’ is a new tactic favoured by hostile states such as Russia,” he added.

In July, three other British men were found guilty of aggravated arson for their role in the warehouse attack in east London, which caused one million pounds ($1.3m) in damage and put dozens of firefighters’ lives at risk.

Nii Mensah, 23, was sentenced to nine years in prison; Jakeem Rose, 23, was jailed for eight years and 10 months; while Ugnius Asmena, 21, was handed seven years.

Ashton Evans, 20, was also jailed for nine years for failing to disclose information about terrorist acts relating to another arson plot targeting two central London businesses owned by a Russian dissident.

British authorities allege that Russia is conducting an increasingly bold espionage and sabotage campaign in the UK, with the head of the MI5 security service, Ken McCallum, saying Moscow is “committed to causing havoc and destruction”.

In a separate case this week, the Metropolitan Police arrested three men from west and central London, also suspected of spying for Russia.

The details of their alleged crimes have not been made public, but they have also been charged under the 2023 National Security Act “on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service”.

MEXICO CITY — The United States slapped sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Friday and said it was sending a massive aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, a new escalation of what the White House has described as a war against drug traffickers in the region. Also Friday, the U.S. military conducted its 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, killing six people in the Caribbean Sea.

The Treasury Department said it was sanctioning Petro, his wife, his son and a political associate for failing to stop the flow of cocaine to the United States, noting that cocaine production in Colombia has risen in recent years. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Petro of “poisoning Americans.”

Petro denied those claims in a statement on X, saying he has fought to combat drug trafficking for decades. He said it was “quite a paradox” to be sanctioned by a country with high rates of cocaine consumption.

The sanctions put Petro in the same category as the leaders of Russia and North Korea and limit his ability to travel to the United States. They mark a new low for relations between Colombia and the United States, which until recently were strong allies, sharing military intelligence, a robust trade relationship and a multibillion-dollar fight against drug trafficking.

Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for the Andes region at the International Crisis Group, a think tank, said that while Petro and the U.S. government have had disagreements over how to tackle trafficking — with the Americans more interested in eradicating coca fields and Colombians focused on cocaine seizures — the two countries have been working for decades toward the same goal.

“To suggest that Colombia is not trying is false and disingenuous,” Dickinson said. “If the U.S. has a partner in counternarcotics in Latin America, it’s Colombia. Colombian forces have been working hand in hand with the Americans for literally four decades. They are the best, most capable and frankly most willing partner the U.S. has in the region.

“If the U.S. were to cut this relationship, it would really be the U.S. shooting themselves in the foot.”

Many viewed the sanctions as punishment for Petro’s criticism of Trump. In recent days, Petro has accused the U.S. of murder, saying American strikes on alleged drug boats lack legal justification and have killed civilians. He has also accused the U.S. of building up its military in South America in an attempt to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The quickened pace of U.S. airstrikes in the region and the unusually large buildup of military force in the Caribbean Sea have fueled those speculations.

On Friday, a Pentagon official said the U.S. ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States.”

The USS Ford is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea along with three destroyers. It would probably take several days for the ships to make the journey to South America.

The White House has increasingly drawn a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug traffickers.

Trump this month declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with them, relying on the same legal authority used by the Bush administration after 9/11.

When reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would request that Congress issue a declaration of war against the cartels, he said that wasn’t the plan.

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be like, dead,” Trump said during a roundtable at the White House with Homeland Security officials.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.