The United States military has carried out another lethal strike on what it says was a drug-smuggling vessel in the Caribbean, killing four people, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday, amid the Trump administration facing mounting scrutiny over its months-long campaign of such strikes.
The US strikes have killed more than 80 alleged smugglers and reignited controversy over a September 2 incident in which a targeted boat was hit twice.
In a post on X, the US Southern Command said the latest operation was ordered by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The military said it “conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization,” adding that intelligence indicated the boat was carrying narcotics along a known trafficking corridor in the Eastern Pacific.
“Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed,” the statement said.
Revelations that a boat struck on September 2 was hit twice, apparently killing survivors of the first attack, have triggered bipartisan investigations in Congress.
The White House has denied that Hegseth ordered the second strike, saying instead that it was authorised by Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley. Officials insist the strike complied with the laws of armed conflict, even though legal experts say targeting unarmed survivors amounts to a war crime. Notably, the US military’s own manual prohibits firing on shipwrecks.
Bradley appeared on Capitol Hill on Thursday for closed-door briefings, denying he had been instructed to kill all those on board.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that Bradley “was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all.”
But Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the order was essentially “Destroy the drugs, kill the 11 people on the boat.”
Smith said video footage showed two survivors “shirtless, clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water, until the missiles come.”
Human rights organisations have long said the strikes amount to extrajudicial killings, a view intensified after details of the September 2 attack emerged. Earlier this week, the family of Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman killed in a US strike in September, filed a complaint before a regional rights body, alleging his right to life had been violated.
The Trump administration has framed its operations as part of a broad campaign against “narco-terrorists”, although Congress has neither authorised the use of force nor declared war.
The latest strike comes as the United States continues deploying military assets near Venezuela’s coastline, with President Trump repeatedly warning that land-based attacks could occur “very soon.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has accused Washington of using counternarcotics operations as a pretext to overthrow his government.
The Trump administration has deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, blown up alleged drug-smuggling vessels travelling from Venezuela and other Latin American countries, and threatened to carry out strikes on Venezuelan soil as part of an escalating pressure campaign against Maduro.
Trump administration officials have described the military campaign as an effort to curb drug trafficking. Although Venezuela produces only a small share of the world’s cocaine, it served as a transit point for 10–13 percent of global production in 2020, according to a U.S. government estimate.
President Nicolás Maduro has accused Donald Trump of using the anti-drug operations as a pretext to overthrow his government and seize Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
In a defiant speech at a rally in Caracas on Monday, Maduro said Venezuela sought peace, but only one grounded in “sovereignty, equality and freedom.”
“We do not want a slave’s peace, nor the peace of colonies! Colony, never! Slaves, never!” he declared.
The post US kills four in new strike on boat in the Caribbean appeared first on Maktoob media.
