US carries out two strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Pacific

The United States has conducted two more military strikes on vessels alleged to be carrying illicit drugs across international waters, killing five people.

For the first time, however, the boats in question were not in the Caribbean Sea but instead in the Pacific Ocean. There have now been at least nine strikes in total, bringing the total known death toll to 37.

On Wednesday afternoon, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the first of the two strikes hit a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday and killed two men.

“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific,” Hegseth wrote on social media.

“There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed.”

A video accompanying Hegseth’s post shows a missile striking a small blue boat clipping across the water, which subsequently erupts in flames.

Hours later, Hegseth revealed the military had struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific, with three more people killed.

“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route and was carrying narcotics,” Hegseth said, without providing evidence.

The latest strikes in the Pacific Ocean open a new front in President Donald Trump’s growing military campaign against Latin American cartels, fuelling questions about the limits and legality of his actions.

Trump claims authority for strike

During a meeting on Wednesday with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump himself addressed the strikes, claiming he needed no authority outside his own to launch missiles in international waters.

Normally, the US Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to authorise military action.

But Trump has argued it is his right as commander-in-chief to confront terrorist threats, as he claims drug traffickers to be. He did, however, say he would approach Congress if he moves forward with attacks on overland targets, something he has been teasing in recent weeks.

“We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land. We don’t have to do that,” Trump said, turning to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “But I think, Marco, I’d like to do that.”

He emphasised that an attack on a land-based target may be imminent.

“Something very serious is going to happen, the equivalent of what’s happening by sea,” Trump said.

All of the US military strikes so far against suspected drug traffickers have been at sea. Critics have questioned that strategy, though, pointing out that the US government’s research indicates that most drug trafficking occurs through overland routes and official ports of entry, particularly along the southern border.

Human rights experts have also pointed out that the attacks likely violated US and international law, which prohibits extrajudicial killings outside of combat.

Labelling someone a “terrorist” is not legally sufficient to justify such an attack, and the Trump administration has not yet provided evidence of wrongdoing in any of the nine cases of boats being bombed.

On Tuesday, three United Nations experts issued a joint letter denouncing the bombing campaign, describing it as a breach of the UN Charter. These bombings, they said, do not constitute an act of self-defence.

“The use of lethal force in international waters without proper legal basis violates the international law of the sea and amounts to extrajudicial execution,” the UN experts wrote.

“The long history of external interventions in Latin America must not be repeated.”

But on Wednesday, Hegseth repeated the administration’s argument that drug traffickers are enemy fighters, equivalent to armed groups like al-Qaeda.

“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people. There will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice,” Hegseth wrote in his statement.

Experts, however, have argued that Trump has stretched the “terrorism” label beyond its original meaning, to justify ever more aggressive actions.

“There’s a world of difference between these (alleged) unspecified narcos and al Qaeda,” Brian Finucane, a researcher with the International Crisis Group nonprofit, posted on social media.

“No armed attack on U.S. like 9/11. No armed conflict. Just the U.S. government engaged in lawless premeditated killing.”

A timeline of the boat bombings

The air strikes began on September 2, when Trump announced on his social media account that he had ordered “a kinetic strike” that morning on a small boat travelling through international waters.

Eleven people — whom Trump identified as “terrorists” — were killed in the attack. Their identities were not disclosed, nor was any evidence provided about their destination or cargo.

“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America,” Trump said, accusing the boat’s passengers, without proof, of being linked to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

More attacks soon followed. On September 15, another strike occurred in the Caribbean, killing three people. Then a third strike took place on September 19, also killing three.

The bombing campaign spilled into the following month. On October 3, Hegseth announced a strike had claimed the lives of four people. Six more people were killed on October 14, in a fifth attack.

The sixth known strike on October 16, however, was a departure in several respects. The target was what the Trump administration described as a “submarine”, and while two people were killed, another two survived.

The survivors were quickly repatriated to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia. Ecuador’s government has since released its survivor, saying there was no evidence he was involved in a crime.

A seventh strike came shortly thereafter, on October 17. While the Trump administration had linked previous attacks to Venezuela, it identified the three people killed in the seventh strike as members of the National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian rebel group.

Tuesday’s strikes also reportedly took place near the Colombian coastline, this time on the Pacific side.

Tensions with South American leaders

The string of nine attacks has heightened the friction between the Trump administration and two prominent left-wing leaders in South America: Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.

Earlier this month, Venezuela’s representative to the UN, Samuel Reinaldo Moncada, appealed to the international community to stop the bombing campaign.

“We are here to avert the commission of an international crime,” Moncada told the UN Security Council.

Already, tensions between the US and Venezuela are high. Both countries have increased their military presence along the Caribbean Sea since the bombing campaign began.

Trump and Maduro have long had an adversarial relationship, stretching back to the Republican leader’s first term, when he sought to implement a campaign of “maximum pressure” on his Venezuelan counterpart.

Upon returning to office for a second term this year, Trump increased the bounty he had previously introduced for Maduro’s arrest to $50m.

He also confirmed this month that he had authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin covert operations in Venezuela.

Maduro has been a key component in Trump’s efforts to expand his executive authority and take more brazen actions.

When Trump, for example, sought to use the Alien Enemies Act to carry out his mass deportation campaign, he cited Maduro as a threat to justify the use of the wartime law.

Maduro has masterminded an “invasion” of the US by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, Trump and his officials have argued, without providing proof.

But recent intelligence reports from the US government contradict that claim. In May, a declassified memo from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found no evidence that Maduro is directing the gang.

‘A death trap’

Similarly, Trump has accused Petro, Colombia’s president, of allowing illicit drugs to flow out of his country. Colombia has long been the world’s largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine and other products.

Calling Petro “a thug and a bad guy”, Trump warned on Wednesday he would consider taking action against the outgoing Colombian leader, who is slated to leave office in 2026.

“He’d better watch it, or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country,” Trump said. “What he has led his country into is a death trap.”

Petro responded shortly afterwards on the social media platform X, threatening to sue Trump and his officials in a US court for slander.

“I will always be against genocide and assassinations of power in the Caribbean,” he wrote.

A former left-wing rebel, Petro has styled himself as a prominent critic of Trump among world leaders. He and Trump have clashed repeatedly over deportations and the ongoing “war on drugs”.

While Trump argued in a recent memo to the US Congress that drug traffickers were “unlawful combatants”, Petro has maintained that some of the victims of the US’s bombing campaign were little more than local fishermen.

“Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to drug trafficking and his daily activity was fishing,” Petro wrote on social media last week, highlighting the case of one Colombian man reportedly killed in the strikes.

Petro then accused the US government of committing crimes: “US government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters.”