The US military conducted another lethal strike on a vessel in the Caribbean on Thursday, killing three people, according to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
This latest action brings the total number of fatalities from the controversial campaign to at least 70.
“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,” Secretary Hegseth announced in a post on X.
He added that the vessel was “trafficking narcotics” in international waters and that no US forces were harmed.
This strike is the 17th since the campaign began on September 2, which Washington says is aimed at curtailing the flow of drugs into the United States. Of the individuals targeted, only three are known to have survived: two were detained and returned to their home countries, and the third is presumed dead.
The Trump administration has escalated its counter-narcotics efforts by telling Congress that the US is now in an “armed conflict” against drug cartels. This shift re-designates those killed as “unlawful combatants” and claims the ability to execute lethal strikes without judicial review, based on a classified Justice Department finding.
The administration argues that the cartels constitute “nonstate armed groups” whose actions amount to an “armed attack against the United States” because they illegally cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year through drug trafficking. The campaign is framed under the law of armed conflict (LOAC), allowing the military to treat the vessels as legitimate military targets, similar to how the US has treated Al-Qaeda in the past.
Some members of Congress and legal experts question this determination, arguing that selling a dangerous substance is not the same as an armed attack and that the actions fall outside the context of a non-international armed conflict.
Critics, including the UN human rights chief, have labeled the operations extrajudicial killings and insist that potential drug traffickers should face prosecution under law enforcement procedures. The administration has also not provided public evidence of the presence of narcotics on the boats or their direct affiliation with designated drug cartels.
The military campaign is proceeding amid the administration’s aggressive attempts to link Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to the drug trade. Despite accumulating a huge military presence near Caracas, administration officials recently briefed lawmakers that they are not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela or against any other land targets.
Officials stated that the Justice Department’s legal opinion and the campaign’s “execute order” are strictly limited to maritime targets and do not permit strikes within Venezuela’s territory.
