Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people aboard.
“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social social media platform. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”
Trump wrote that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics” and said that it was “associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks” but did not provide any evidence. Trump said that defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the strike on Tuesday morning and also shared video footage of the strike, as he has with prior strikes.
This marks the fifth deadly US strike in the Caribbean, according to the Associated Press since the beginning of September, and comes just weeks after Trump administration officials said that the US is now in a “non international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
An internal Trump administration memo obtained by the New York Times earlier this month reportedly stated that Trump has deemed cartels engaged in drug smuggling as “non-state armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States”.
The US has defendedthe boat strikes as countering “narco-terrorist” members of Tren de Aragua, which has been designated a foreign terrorist organization. The White House has argued that military action is a necessary escalation to disrupt the flow of drugs into the US.
However, some lawmakers and human rights groups have questioned the legality of the attacks. In September, experts at the United Nations condemned the US strikes on small boats it believes to be trafficking drugs as extrajudicial executions.
“International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers,” the experts said. “Criminal activities should be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.”
Last week, Colombian president Gustavo Petro said that there were “indications” that one of the recently targeted boats was Colombian “and had Colombians onboard”.
The White House quickly pushed back against Petro’s claims, demanding that he retract his statement, which the White House described as “baseless and reprehensible”.
Also last week, an attempt in the US Senate to prevent further US strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats off the coast of Venezuela without congressional approval failed, after nearly all Republicans and Democratic Senator John Fetterman voted against the measure.
