The US military carried out another strike on a boat operating in the Caribbean officials deemed to be a “narco-trafficking vessel” on Friday morning, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in a social media post. The strike killed all four people who were on board, Hegseth said.
The attack marks at least the fourth known US military strike in the Caribbean since the beginning of September, all of which have targeted boats the administration claims are “affiliated” with drug cartels that the US has designated as terrorist organizations in recent months.
Hegseth posted on X on Friday that at President Trump’s order, he directed the “lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility.”
The attack took place in international waters just off Venezuela’s coast, Hegseth wrote — a move that could further inflame tensions between the US and the Venezuelan regime. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said on Tuesday that he is preparing to declare a state of emergency to protect his country in the event of an attack by the US military.
Hegseth did not say which terrorist organization the boat was allegedly affiliated with, but added that “our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route.” He alleged the boat was “transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people.”
The administration has previously argued that other boats it has struck were also headed to the US, necessitating urgent military action. However, at least one boat struck by the US military last month had turned around before it was hit, CNN has reported, indicating it did not pose an imminent threat to the US or US forces. Following the US’ first such strike on September 2, Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially said that the boat had likely been headed toward Trinidad or elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Legal experts and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have questioned the legality of the strikes.
“They’re throwing a lot of words out there that don’t necessarily go together or constitute a coherent legal justification,” Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in war powers issues, previously told CNN.
In a letter to Congress this week, the Pentagon said Trump had determined that the US is in an “armed conflict” with the drug cartels his administration has designated as terrorist organizations, and that smugglers for the cartels are “unlawful combatants,” CNN has reported.
Describing the US military strikes as part of an armed conflict suggests that the attacks are part of a longer-term campaign and not just one-off strikes in self-defense. In his post on X on Friday, Hegseth said “these strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!”