Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday he ordered a fourth strike on a small boat in the waters off Venezuela, killing four men, according to a social media post.
“Earlier this morning, on President Trump’s orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” read a 9:33 a.m. X post from Hegseth.
The Secretary of War continued on to say the strike killed “four male narco-terrorists,” and that no U.S. forces were harmed in the operation.
Hegseth said the strike was conducted off the coast of Venezuela to intercept the vessel, which he said was “transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people.”
In his post, Hegseth also said that “our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route.”
The strike comes less than a day after it was revealed that President Donald Trump declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and declared that the United States is now in an “armed conflict” with them in a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
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