Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro addressed the UN General Assembly Tuesday to call for a “criminal process” to be opened against US President Donald Trump for American strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean.

Petro said unarmed “poor young people” died in the strikes that Washington said were part of a US anti-drug operation off the coast of Venezuela, whose president Washington accuses of running a cartel, The Guardian reported. 

More than a dozen people are known to have been killed in strikes on at least three boats in attacks UN experts have described as “extrajudicial execution”.

Trump has dispatched eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean, and the biggest US deployment in years has raised fears in Venezuela of an invasion.

President Nicolás Maduro has accused Trump – who during his first term tried unsuccessfully to expedite the Venezuelan president’s ouster – of trying to affect regime change.

Thousands of Venezuelans have joined a civilian militia in response to Maduro’s call for bolstering the country’s defenses against the US “threat”.

Petro said he suspects some of those killed in the US boat strikes were Colombian.

He argued in New York on Tuesday that Trump must be investigated for giving the order for US forces to target “young people who simply wanted to escape poverty” while many cartel bosses live in the United States.

“A criminal process must be initiated against those officials who are from the United States. This includes the senior official who gave the order, President Trump,” Petro said.

Ties between the US and Colombia have soured under Petro – the country’s first-ever leftist leader.