President Donald Trump said Friday he ordered another strike against a boat in international waters in the Caribbean that he said was “trafficking illicit narcotics.”
“On my orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the US SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform.
It was the third such strike targeting alleged drug traffickers — and the second one this week.
Trump’s post did not say when the latest strike was carried out.
According to Trump, the strike killed three men, who he called “narcoterrorists.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a video on social media showing a speeding craft moving quickly through the water before being struck by an apparent missile and then engulfed in a large burst of flame.
The Pentagon referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond.
Trump said intelligence indicated the vessel was trafficking drugs and was “transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
The strike earlier this week also killed three people, Trump said.
In the past, the U.S. government has relied on the U.S. Coast Guard and law enforcement personnel to board vessels suspected of carrying drugs for inspection.
But earlier this year, Trump insisted that drug cartels should be in the same legal category as foreign terrorist organizations, paving the way for the kind of lethal military force reserved under the law to prevent an imminent kinetic attack against Americans.
Critics of his administration have questioned this legal justification and whether it amounts to a war crime.
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