A U.S. military strike on Monday killed two more people accused by the Trump administration of trafficking narcotics in the eastern Pacific, Pentagon officials said, bringing the death toll in the U.S. campaign to at least 107.
In a post on social media, U.S. Southern Command said that the strike, conducted at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, had targeted a boat sailing along a “known narco-trafficking route” in the eastern Pacific and killed two men. The New York Times could not independently verify the strike or the intelligence cited by the military.
It was the 30th strike announced by the U.S. military since early September, coming days after President Trump said the United States had struck a coastal site in the region related to drugs and Venezuela. The United States’ boat attacks in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean have drawn the ire of legal experts and members of Congress, who contend that the strikes amount to extrajudicial killings and, potentially, war crimes.
Monday’s strike was the latest U.S. show of force in the region, in a campaign focused on pressuring Venezuela. The United States has amassed more than 15,000 troops and a dozen warships in the Caribbean Sea. In recent days, it announced a partial blockade of oil tankers sailing to and from Venezuela, prompting the government of President Nicolás Maduro to order his navy to escort oil tankers coming from its ports.
On Friday, Mr. Trump suggested the United States had also made an attack on a site in Venezuela, after months of threats by the president to escalate the military campaign to land strikes. He said that the United States had knocked out “a big facility” related to drug trafficking in the region days earlier.
He offered few new details when asked about the assertion on Monday.
“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida. “They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”
Mr. Trump declined to say how the attack had been carried out or by whom, where it occurred, and what role it played in drug trafficking, adding only that it was along a shoreline.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
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