Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on Monday said relations with the U.S. were broken after strikes against boats in Caribbean waters.

"Broken by them with their threats of bombs, death, and blackmail," Maduro said during his briefing.

Maduro's briefing to international media is the second one this month as tensions with the U.S. over the deployment of warships in the Caribbean and the strike on a boat the U.S. claims carried drugs and gang members from Venezuela.

Right after Maduro’s news conference ended, President Donald Trump said the U.S. military again targeted a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three aboard the vessel.

Trump announced the strike in a social media post.

“The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the U.S.,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the strike. “These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests.”

The strike that Trump says was carried out Monday came two weeks after another military strike on what the Trump administration says was a drug-carrying speedboat from Venezuela that killed 11.

The Trump administration justified the earlier strike as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. Since then, relations between the countries have been marked by aggressive rhetoric and rising tensions.

“It is not tension, it is aggression across the board”, Maduro said during the press conference held at a prominent Caracas hotel. “It is aggression of a military nature. And Venezuela is empowered by international law to confront this aggression comprehensively.”