Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Sunday that the US conducted a strike Friday on a boat that American intelligence officials believed was involved in illegal drug trafficking in the Caribbean.
Hegseth wrote in a post on X that the vessel was affiliated with a Colombian terrorist organization and had “substantial amounts of narcotics” on board. He said the three men on the boat were all killed and no US forces were harmed.
This is the seventh known strike in a series of recent attacks by the US military on vessels that the Trump administration says are involved in drug trafficking. It comes days after another strike on an alleged drug boat that CNN reported appeared to be the first time an attack did not kill everyone on board. President Donald Trump said Saturday the survivors of that strike were released to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
“These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder and terrorism to impose their will, threaten our national security and poison our people,” Hegseth wrote Sunday. “The United States military will treat these organizations like the terrorists they are—they will be hunted, and killed, just like Al Qaeda.”
The strikes are a part of the Trump administration’s hardening stance against South American countries allegedly involved in smuggling illicit drugs into the US. The president recently authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela and has been weighing military action inside the country as part of a pressure campaign to oust President Nicolás Maduro.
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