The US military conducted a strike against a vessel in the Caribbean on Thursday, killing three people, according to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization,” Hegseth said in a post on X, adding, “The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters.”
Hegseth added that US forces were not harmed in the strike.
The US military has killed 70 people in 17 strikes that have destroyed 18 boats as part of a campaign that Washington says is aimed at curtailing the flow of drugs into the United States. There had been three survivors of those strikes, two of whom were briefly detained by the US Navy before being returned to their home countries. The other is presumed dead after a search by the Mexican Navy.
The Trump administration has told Congress that the US is now in an “armed conflict” against drug cartels beginning with its first strike on September 2, labeling those killed “unlawful combatants” and claiming the ability to engage in lethal strikes without judicial review due to a classified Justice Department finding.
Some members of Congress as well as human rights groups have questioned that finding and argued that potential drug traffickers should face prosecution, as had been the policy of interdiction carried out by the US before President Donald Trump took office.
The Trump administration has also not provided public evidence of the presence of narcotics on the boats struck, nor their affiliation with drug cartels.
The Trump administration has been aggressively trying to link Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to the drug trade while accumulating a huge military presence near Caracas, though Venezuela is not known to be a major source of cocaine for the US market.
Administration officials told lawmakers on Wednesday the US is not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela and doesn’t have a legal justification that would support attacks against any land targets right now, CNN previously reported, according to sources familiar with the briefing conducted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth and an official from the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Lawmakers were told during the classified session that the opinion produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to justify strikes against suspected drug boats does not permit strikes inside Venezuela itself or any other territories, four sources said.
The “execute order” that launched the US military campaign against suspected drug boats that began in September also does not extend to land targets, the briefers said, according to the sources. The officials did not rule out any potential future actions, one of the sources said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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