President Donald Trump has launched another lethal strike on a fifth alleged drug smuggling boat from Venezuela, killing six people but once again offering no evidence of who or what was on board.
Amid growing international skepticism about the strikes, the president released a video on Tuesday showing a boat being blown up in international waters, taking the total number of people killed by the Trump administration as part of its campaign against “narco-terrorists” to 27 in six weeks.
“Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking, in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility — just off the Coast of Venezuela,” the president announced on Truth Social.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route.
“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!”
The strike is the fifth that the president has announced since September 2, when the first operation killed 11 people, who Trump claimed were from the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
It was followed by several additional strikes on alleged drug boats in the same region, the latest of which took place on October 3.
But legal and drug policy experts have questioned the legality of the strikes under international and U.S. law.
Some global leaders, such as Colombian President Gustav Petro, have also questioned whether drug smugglers were actually on board and have called for a criminal investigation.
“Trump fires missiles at unarmed migrant boats and accuses them of being drug traffickers and terrorists, when they did not have a single weapon to defend themselves,” Petro told the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month.
“There must be criminal charges opened against those officials of the United States, including the senior official who gave the order: President Trump, who allowed missiles to be fired against young people who simply wanted to escape poverty.”
Tuesday’s strike came after Trump quietly determined that the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
The cartels have been classified by the administration as “non-state armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
But some viewed it as a dramatic escalation, because “armed conflict” under international law allows countries to kill enemies even if they pose no threat, detain them without due process, and prosecute them in military courts under different standards than civilian courts.
“Trump trying to apply this new military doctrine against an enemy who is quite literally incapable of surrender is, by its very definition, a forever war,” Sanho Tree, a global drug policy expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, told The Daily Beast.
Democrats last week forced a vote on the issue under the War Powers Act, which was aimed at preventing continued U.S. strikes without Congressional approval.
However, the 48-51 vote failed to get enough support to move forward.
Republican Senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski voted with Democrats in favor, while Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator John Fetterman joined Republicans in opposing it.
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