The US military carried out another deadly strike on alleged drug-traffickers at sea on Saturday, persevering with a monthslong marketing campaign by the Trump administration that has been broadly criticized as possible unlawful.
The newest strike focused a boat in the Caribbean Sea and killed three individuals on board, based on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
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“Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on another narco-trafficking vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) in the Caribbean,” Hegseth announced on X with an unclassified video of the strike.
Hegseth mentioned three males, whom he recognized as “narco-terrorists,” have been killed in the operation, which he mentioned was carried out in worldwide waters. No US forces have been harmed in the strike, he famous.
The boat was “carrying narcotics” and “transiting along a known narco-trafficking route,” Hegseth mentioned, citing US intelligence.
Saturday’s assault marks the fifteenth recognized US military strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel since the Trump administration started the operations in early September. The strikes, which have been carried out in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, have killed a complete of 64 individuals.
“These narco-terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home—and they will not succeed. The Department will treat them EXACTLY how we treated Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth mentioned Saturday.
Saturday’s strike is the first focusing on a boat in the Caribbean since October 24. After concentrating on the area initially, the Pentagon in latest weeks intentionally refocused its efforts towards suspected drug traffickers to the japanese Pacific, NCS reported Friday.
The shift was made as a result of administration officers consider they’ve stronger proof linking cocaine transport to the US from these western routes, based on individuals acquainted with the matter. Six recognized strikes have been carried out in the Pacific over the final two weeks, together with three carried out in a single day final week.
Democrats in Congress and worldwide leaders have questioned the legality of the Trump administration’s accelerating strikes.
On Friday, the workplace of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned the strikes violate international law and known as for them to cease.
“These attacks and their mounting human cost are unacceptable. The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats,” human rights commissioner Volker Türk mentioned, based on an announcement launched by his workplace.
The Trump administration has produced a categorized authorized opinion that justifies deadly strikes towards a secret and expansive checklist of cartels and suspected drug traffickers, NCS previously reported. The opinion argues that the president is allowed to authorize lethal pressure towards a broad vary of cartels as a result of they pose an imminent menace to Americans.
On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers have accused the administration of missing transparency about the strikes. A closed-door briefing Thursday lacked important particulars and Pentagon legal professionals have been pulled from the session at the final minute, Democrats asserted final week.
A day earlier, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner blasted the Trump administration for holding a briefing that day on the strikes however not telling Democrats about it, calling the transfer “a partisan stunt.”
While touring in Asia on Friday, Hegseth insisted he had engaged Congress on a bipartisan foundation relating to the strikes. However, that very same day, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Republican, and Ranking Member Jack Reed, a Democrat, launched two letters they mentioned they despatched Hegseth over the previous month searching for particulars about the operations however which have gone unanswered.
NCS’s Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen, Kaanita Iyer, and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.