The Trump administration launched another round of deadly strikes on vessels it accused of smuggling drugs, killing 14 people in four boats on Monday in its growing military campaign off the Central and South American coasts, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday.
Mr. Hegseth said that the strikes — three of them — took place in international waters and that there had been one survivor. They bring the overall death toll to 57 in the campaign, which began in September. Mr. Hegseth said that Mexican search and rescue authorities had “accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue,” but did not release further details.
“The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and carrying narcotics,” Mr. Hegseth said in a post on social media announcing the strikes and accompanied by a video. He said eight men were on the boats in the first, four men were on the boat in the second strike and three men were on the boat that was struck third.
He did not provide geographic details beyond saying the strikes took place in the eastern Pacific. After launching a series of strikes in the Caribbean near the coast of Venezuela, the Trump administration has more recently directing the U.S. military to strike boats in the eastern Pacific, off the coast of Colombia.
Mr. Hegseth in his social media post compared the strikes against the boat cartels to America’s wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan over the past 24 years.
“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” he said.
A broad range of outside experts in laws governing the use of armed force have said the campaign is illegal because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even criminal suspects — who are not directly participating in armed hostilities. But the Trump administration has asserted that the president has the power to “determine,” without any authorization from Congress, that drug cartels and those who work for them are enemy combatants.
Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that each destroyed boat saves 25,000 American lives. In reality, about 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, but most of those deaths are fentanyl, which comes from labs in Mexico. South America produces cocaine.”
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
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