Colombia Halts US Intelligence Sharing Over Airstrikes

Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday ordered a suspension of intelligence sharing with United States security agencies, escalating a diplomatic rift with Washington over American military strikes on vessels suspected of drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific regions. The decision, announced via a post on X, responds to at least 20 U.S. airstrikes since early September that have killed between 75 and 80 people, according to Pentagon figures.

Petro, a former guerrilla leader who took office in 2022, described the strikes as violations of human rights and international law, arguing that they amount to extrajudicial killings without due process. In an interview with NBC News aired Thursday, he criticized U.S. President Donald Trump directly, calling him "a barbarian" who "wants to frighten us." Petro emphasized that the operations target poor boat operators hired by cartels rather than the traffickers themselves. "They are poor boatmen, they know how to drive a boat, they are hired in their poverty by the gangsters. But gangsters don't sit on the boats," he said. He added that some victims may have been ordinary fishermen, recounting a recent meeting with the family...