• US forces attacked vessel linked to Colombian group, says Hegseth.
• Trump accuses Petro of backing drug production, halts US payments.
• US-Colombia relations strained over military actions, visa revocation.

US forces attacked a vessel associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday, the same day President Donald Trump called Colombian President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug leader” and said payments to the South American nation would cease.

Trump’s comments marked a new low in relations between Bogota and Washington, which have frayed since Trump returned to office in January and since his administration launched a series of strikes on vessels allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean.

Hegseth wrote on X that the Pentagon had destroyed a vessel and killed three people on Friday “in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” which includes the Caribbean.

He said the ship was affiliated with the leftist rebel group National Liberation Army and was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, without offering evidence to back the claim.

The Pentagon said it had nothing to add beyond Hegseth’s initial post.

Colombia condemns Trump’s remarks

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry condemned Trump’s remarks as offensive and a direct threat to its sovereignty, and vowed to seek international support in defence of Petro and the country’s autonomy.

“These accusations represent an extremely serious act and undermine the dignity of the president of Colombians,” it said in a statement.

The post from Hegseth came hours after Trump lambasted Petro on social media and said the United States would stop large-scale payments and subsidies to Colombia.

“President Gustavo Petro, of Colombia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc,” Trump wrote.

Reuters could not immediately establish which payments Trump was referring to. Colombia was once among the largest recipients of US aid in the Western Hemisphere. Still, the flow of money was suddenly curtailed this year by the shuttering of USAID, the US government’s humanitarian assistance arm.

The US State Department referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a query.

Fraught relations

Last month, the United States revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and urged US soldiers to disobey Trump’s orders.

The US administration’s deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean have also outraged Colombians. Many legal experts and human rights activists have condemned the extraordinary series of military actions, with Amnesty International describing it as murder on the high seas.

Earlier this month, Petro said one of the strikes hit a Colombian vessel, an allegation the Trump administration denied.

Petro condemned the most recent bombing, saying the boat belonged to a “humble family”, not the National Liberation Army. He also hit back at Trump’s remarks.

“Mr Trump, Colombia has never been rude to the United States… but you are rude and ignorant to Colombia,” Petro responded on X. “Since I am not a businessman, I am even less a drug trafficker. There is no greed in my heart.”

Colombia is fighting its own longstanding drug problems. Last year, Petro pledged to tame coca-growing regions in the country with massive social and military intervention, but the strategy has brought little success.

In September, Trump designated countries such as Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia and Venezuela among those the United States believes to have “failed demonstrably” in upholding counternarcotics agreements during the past year.

US President Donald Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accept Russia’s terms for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine in a White House meeting on Friday, warning that President Vladimir Putin threatened to “destroy” Ukraine if it didn’t comply, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

During the meeting, Trump insisted Zelenskiy surrender the entire eastern Donbas region to Russia, repeatedly echoing talking points the Russian president had made in their call a day earlier, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Ukraine ultimately managed to swing Trump back to endorsing a freeze of the current front lines, the FT said. Trump said after the meeting that the two sides should stop the war at the battle line; Zelenskiy said that was an important point.

The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the FT report.

Zelenskiy arrived at the White House on Friday looking for weapons to keep fighting his country’s war, but met an American president who appeared more intent on brokering a peace deal.

In Thursday’s call with Trump, Putin had offered some small areas of the two southern frontline regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in exchange for the much larger parts of the Donbas now under Ukrainian control, the FT report added.

That is less than his original 2024 demand for Kyiv to cede the entirety of Donbas plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, an area of nearly 20,000 square km.

Zelenskiy’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside business hours on whether Trump had pressured Zelenskiy to accept peace on Russia’s terms.

Trump and Putin agreed on Thursday to hold a second summit on the war in Ukraine within the next two weeks, provisionally in Budapest, following an August 15 meeting in Alaska that failed to produce a breakthrough.

PARIS: Thieves broke into Paris’ Louvre museum by using a crane and smashing an upstairs window on Sunday, stealing priceless jewellery from an area that houses the French crown jewels before escaping on motorbikes, the French government said.

The robbery is likely to raise awkward questions about security at the museum, where officials had already sounded the alarm about a lack of investment at a world-famous site that welcomed 8.7 million visitors in 2024.

The thieves struck at about 9:30am (0730 GMT) when the museum had already opened its doors to the public, and entered the Galerie d’Apollon building, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The robbery took around four minutes, Culture Minister Rachida Dati told TF1, and it was carried out by professionals.

“We saw some footage: they don’t target people, they enter calmly in four minutes, smash display cases, take their loot, and leave. No violence, very professional,” she said on TF1.

She said one piece of jewellery had been recovered outside the museum, apparently dropped as they made their escape.

Dati declined to say what the item was, but newspaper Le Parisien said it was believed to be the crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie. The jewel was broken, the newspaper said.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told France Inter that three or four thieves got into the museum from outside using a crane that was positioned on a truck.

“They broke a window, headed to several display cases and stole jewels… which have a real historical, priceless value,” Nunez said.

Probe underway

A video posted on X by a museum guide showed visitors filing towards exits in the middle of their tour, initially unaware of the reason for the disruption.

Nunez said a probe had been opened, with a specialised police unit that has a high success rate in cracking high-profile robberies such as this one, tasked with running it.

No injuries were reported, Dati said.

The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum and home to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, said on X it would remain closed for the day for “exceptional reasons”.

In one of the most daring art thefts in history, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the museum in 1911 in a heist involving a former employee. He was eventually caught and the painting was returned to the museum two years later.

Questions on security

Earlier this year, officials at the Louvre requested urgent help from the French government to restore and renovate the museum’s ageing exhibition halls and better protect its countless works of art.

Dati said the issue of museum security was not new.

“For 40 years, there was little focus on securing these major museums, and two years ago, the president of the Louvre requested a security audit from the police prefect. Why? Because museums must adapt to new forms of crime,” she said. “Today, it’s organised crime — professionals.”