The United States has carried out another military strike against what it claimed was a vessel carrying illegal drugs in the Caribbean, killing six people onboard, the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said.
In a social media post on Friday morning, Hegseth stated: “The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics.”
He said that the strike, conducted in international waters, killed all six people who were onboard, and was “the first strike at night”.
No US forces were harmed, he added.
As has become common with previous announcements of such attacks, Hegseth shared a short video showing a boat at sea suddenly exploding as it was struck with military ordnance.
Donald Trump announced what appears to have been the first strike on a boat on 3 September, releasing a brief video of the attack.
Since then, the Trump administration has declared more strikes without disclosing many details about the targets other than the number of people killed and the allegation that the boats carried narcotics. The strikes have drawn widespread condemnation, including from civil liberties groups and several South American countries.
On Tuesday, the Guardian reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is providing much of the intelligence used to carry out airstrikes. Experts have said that the agency’s central role means much of the evidence used to select the targets will almost certainly remain secret.
The attacks have taken place both in the Caribbean and – this week – off the Pacific coast of South America.
On Friday morning, Hegseth claimed, without providing any evidence, that the target of the latest attack was “a vessel operated by Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO), trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean Sea”.
The administration has referred to Tren de Aragua and other gangs as terrorist organizations. Legal experts have suggested that simply characterizing gangs and drug cartels as terrorist organizations did not give the administration any additional authority to use lethal force.
White House officials have also sought to justify the strikes internally and externally by claiming Trump was exercising his powers under article 2 of the US constitution, which allows the president to use military force in self-defense in limited engagements.
Earlier this week, the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, condemned the US strikes, describing them as as “murder”.
“The US government’s strategy breaks the norms of international law,” Petro said.
