The U.S. military carried out another strike targeting a purported Venezuelan drug smuggling boat on Friday morning off the country’s coast, killing four people, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said.
“Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike, and no U.S. forces were harmed in the operation,” he said. “The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics 00 headed to America to poison our people.”
The secretary added that U.S. intelligence confirmed “without a doubt” that the vessel “was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route,” though he did not provide details of that evidence.
Hegseth shared the announcement on his social media platform and shared a video showing the vessel in transit before being hit by the strike, which set the ship ablaze.
President Donald Trump informed Congress that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, declaring that cartels to be terrorist organizations and their members unlawful combatants.”
Prior to that declaration on Thursday, the military had carried out a handful of these strikes, which represent a dramatic shift in how the U.S. handles stopping drug smugglers. For many years, the U.S. Coast Guard has been involved in interdicting these vessels, arresting those on board, who are then afforded due process in the United States.
Those strikes had raised legal questions about the military’s use of lethal force.
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The U.S. military has surged personnel and capabilities into the region over the last couple of months as a part of the administration’s broader effort to cut down on drug smuggling, while Trump told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that his administration is going to “look very seriously at cartels coming by land.”
The U.S. does not recognize Nicholas Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela, and declared him the head of the Cartel of the Suns. The administration doubled its reward for information leading to his arrest from $25 million to $50 million, while Attorney General Pam Bondi said in August the U.S. had seized up to $700 million of assets allegedly linked to him.
