Washington DC - President Donald Trump said Saturday the US was sending two alleged drug traffickers back to their native Ecuador and Colombia, after a military strike on their "drug-smuggling submarine" in the Caribbean that killed two others.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro confirmed the Colombian suspect had been repatriated but accused Washington of having killed a fisherman in an earlier strike.

"It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route," Trump claimed on his Truth Social platform, further alleging that the vessel was loaded with fentanyl and other drugs.

"Two of the terrorists were killed. The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution."

Petro said the Colombian suspect would be prosecuted.

"We are glad he is alive and he will be prosecuted according to the law," Petro said on social media platform X.

The strike, which Trump had announced on Friday, was the latest in an unprecedented US military campaign that he says is aimed at choking the flow of drugs from Latin America to the US.

At least six vessels, most of them speedboats, have been targeted by US strikes in the Caribbean since September, with Venezuela alleged to be the origin of some of them.

Washington has not revealed the departure point of the alleged drug-smuggling submarine in the latest strike.

Semi-submersibles built in clandestine jungle shipyards have for years been used to ferry cocaine from South America, particularly Colombia, to Central America or Mexico, usually via the Pacific Ocean.

Washington says its campaign is dealing a decisive blow to drug trafficking, but it has provided no evidence that the people killed – at least 27 so far – were drug smugglers.

Experts say such summary killings are illegal even if they target confirmed narcotics traffickers.

On Saturday, Petro accused Washington of having killed a fisherman in one of the strikes, and of violating his country's sovereignty.

"US government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in our territorial waters. Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to drug traffickers and his daily activity was fishing," the leftist leader said on X.

Carranza was reportedly killed in a September strike by US forces on his boat while he was fishing in the Caribbean, according to video testimony of his family members shared by the president on X.

"The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal on," Petro said. "We await explanations from the US government."

Petro's government has repeatedly criticized the US campaign. Last month, he called at the United Nations for criminal proceedings to be opened against Trump over the strikes.