Bogotá, Colombia - FARC dissidents warned the US on Saturday that they would fight back against any "violations of Colombian sovereignty," after President Donald Trump threatened to launch ground operations in the Latin American countries.

"We are used to fighting and combating whoever we must. We have always been staunch opponents of the American empire," the group's Central General Staff (EMC) said in a text shared with journalists.

"We will not allow military interventions and violations of Colombian sovereignty."

Alongside a larger military buildup, the US has conducted at least 10 air strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 43 people it claims, without evidence, were involved in drug trafficking. The attacks are broadly seen as extrajudicial executions and blatantly illegal.

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Colombia is the world's largest cocaine producer, and the EMC rebels – a splinter group of the now-defunct left-wing guerilla group FARC – control production in regions including Catatumbo on the Venezuelan border.

The group is led by Ivan Mordisco, who is considered to be the country's most wanted criminal, earning comparisons by President Gustavo Petro to infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Trump has smeared Petro as a "drug-trafficking leader" and has imposed financial sanctions on him.

He has also urged the leftist leader to "close" Colombia's coca fields "or the United States will close them up for him, and it won't be done nicely."

Petro said Thursday that any ground aggression would be "an invasion and a breach of national sovereignty."

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who also faces US sanctions and similar threats from Trump, has accused the White House of "fabricating a new eternal war" with the boat strikes.