The U.S. and Ecuador carried out a joint operation targeting drug trafficking operations in the South American country, authorities in both countries said on Friday, with the U.S. calling the move “lethal kinetic operations.”

Neither the U.S. Southern Command, a branch of its military that oversees forces in Latin America, nor Ecuador’s defense ministry, said if anyone was killed or captured in the strike, which Ecuador dubbed operation “Total Extermination.”

The operations used helicopters, aircraft, river boats and drones to locate and bomb a drug traffickers’ training camp in north-east Ecuador near the Colombian border, Ecuador’s defense ministry said in a statement.

The camp belonged to the Comandos de la Frontera (CDF), a Colombian crime group made up of FARC dissidents, and had a capacity for 50 people, it added.

Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa has made a military crackdown on organised crime a cornerstone of his administration, and his government imposed tariffs on its larger neighbor Colombia, accusing it of not doing enough to fight drug trafficking.

He is set to travel to Miami this weekend to take part in the Trump administration’s “Shield of the Americas” summit, which brings together many right-wing leaders across the region with a focus on regional security and organized crime.

“The United States is a key ally in this fight,” the defense ministry said.

“At the request of Ecuador, the Department of War executed targeted action to advance our shared objective of dismantling narco-terrorist networks,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X.

The operation followed a similar U.S-Ecuadorean operation announced by the U.S. Southern Command earlier this week.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington, Alexandra Valencia in Quito and Sarah Morland in Mexico City; Editing by Christian Martinez and Diane Craft)

U.S. Gulf Coast heavy grades continued to surge on Friday as the Iran conflict spurred several Middle Eastern producers of heavy crude to curtail production and drove buyers to scoop up U.S. barrels.

Prices of Mars sour crude, the flagship crude produced in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and favored by refiners globally, traded at a $11 premium to U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude on Friday, brokers said. That was the highest since April 2020, and up $4 from Thursday.

Just a week ago it traded at a premium of $1.50.

Other heavy grades such as the Heavy Louisiana Sweet and the West Texas Sour also rose.

Benchmark crude oil prices have surged since the initial attacks last week, with Brent crude settling at $92.69 a barrel, its highest level since October 2023 on Friday.

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced several countries, including Iraq, to curb output. The strait is a key route for medium and heavy sour crude from the Persian Gulf, and those flows are now largely cut off. Additional production cuts announced in Kuwait on Friday also helped lift Mars prices, a trader said.

“Refiners that rely on these grades will need to find similar, or roughly similar, alternatives to replace the lost barrels, so Mars and other U.S. Gulf sour heavies and mediums are natural substitutes and are getting bid up aggressively,” Kpler lead Americas oil analyst Matt Smith said, adding that buyers, especially in Asia, are scrambling for more of these medium and heavy crude barrels.

“This time of year also marks the shift from winter into driving season, when demand typically rises across all crude grades,” said Tim Snyder, chief economist at Matador Economics, adding that ultimately the supply disruption caused by war was driving prices.

“In the short term we will continue to see these grades rise until we see the Strait of Hormuz open up,” Snyder said.

(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in New York and Georgina McCartney in Houston; Editing by David Gregorio)