U.S. kills three in latest strike against an alleged drug boat
by Adam Schrader
Washington DC (UPI) Nov 2, 2025

The United States killed three people in its latest strike against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced.

Hegseth said in a post to social media Saturday that American forces conducted a kinetic strike against the vessel in international waters.

He said three "narco-terrorists" were on board and all three were killed.

"These narco-terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home -- and they will not succeed," he said. "The department will treat them exactly how we treated Al-Qaeda. We will continue to track them, map them, hunt them and kill them."

At least 64 people have now been killed by the U.S. in 15 strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean since they began in September.

The strikes have been celebrated by families who have lost their children to fentanyl poisoning, some of whom recently rallied in the nation's capital for a day of remembrance.

"One boat, two boat, three boat -- boom!" a mother who lost her 15-year-old son to Percocet laced with fentanyl told Fox News is how she feels about the strikes on boats allegedly transporting drugs to the United States. "Who did it? Trump did it!"

President Donald Trump in September told reporters that he had authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela during the summer as the Pentagon was directing a slow military buildup in the waters off the South American country.

On Oct. 24, weeks into the anti-drug trafficking campaign, Hegseth directed the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to transit to the Caribbean. The group includes three destroyers, in addition to the aircraft carrier.

There already were eight naval surface vessels, a submarine and roughly 6,000 soldiers deployed to the area before the strike group was ordered there from the Mediterranean.

Trump, who notified Congress that he was engaged in conflict with drug cartels, has said in recent weeks as the naval presence has grown that he is considering whether to allow strikes inside Venezuela to combat the cartels and weaken Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's administration.

But the strikes have raised concerns of escalating an conflict that could to war with Venezuela and Colombia, according to reports.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., filed a bipartisan bill that aims to prevent the Trump administration from entering a full-throated war with Venezuela.

Critics of the Trump administration's actions have expressed that only Congress can declare war.

On Friday, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said they violate international law and amount to extrajudicial killings.

"Under international human rights law, the intentional use of lethal force is only permissible as a last resort against individuals who pose an imminent threat to life," High Commissioner Volker Türk said.

"Based on the very sparse information provided publicly by the US authorities, none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force against them under international law,"

Hegseth: U.S. strikes another alleged drug-trafficking boat, killing 4
Washington DC (UPI) Oct 29, 2025 - The U.S. military on Wednesday attacked another alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people in the strike, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said.

The attack was announced by Hegseth on social media. With the strike, the United States has conducted at least 14 attacks on purported drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September. The United States has killed more than 60 people in the strikes.

Until the first strike on Sept. 2, the United States had never used the military's lethal force to combat drug trafficking.

The Trump administration has defended the strikes as necessary to protect Americans from drugs, asserting that they comply with laws pertaining to "armed conflict."

President Donald Trump has also designated a handful of drug cartels as terrorist organizations, as part of a policy aimed at targeting them and their alleged members for deportation. His administration has said vessels they have attacked belonged to those designated groups.

Critics argue it's abuse of military power, and could amount to a war crime. United Nations experts last month described the killings as "extrajudicial executions."

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused Trump of murder, killing a fisherman named Alejandro Carranza, in a mid-September strike.

"This vessel, like all the others, was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route and carrying narcotics," Hegseth said Wednesday in a statement announcing the most recent strike.

A video accompanying the social media statement showed a small outboard motor boat lolling on the water that is then seemingly struck by a missile and becomes engulfed in flames.

"The Western Hemisphere is no longer a safe haven for narco-terrorists bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans," Hegseth said, adding that the Department of Defense "will continue to hunt them down and eliminate them where ever they operate."

Hegseth said the strike was "at the direction of President Trump."

Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, a U.S. foreign policy research nonprofit organization, described Hegseth's statement as an admission Trump ordered the extrajudicial killings.

"Or in other words, murders."

"Hegseth's post alone provides prima facie evidence of the crimes' elements as well as his and Trump's culpability for them," he said on X.

"They should be held accountable."

The strike came on the same day the Trump administration held a military briefing for Republicans only.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., accused the Trump administration of withholding legally requested information from Democratic senators by eluding them.

He said it was "indefensible and dangerous."

"Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party," Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

"For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress' constitutional obligation to oversee matters of peace and war."

On Monday, Hegseth announced strikes against four vessels in the Eastern Pacific, killing 14 people. There was at least one survivor from the attacks.

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