Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has revealed that the United States has conducted a fourth “lethal, kinetic strike” on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, accusing the vessel of carrying narcotics.
In a Friday post on the social media platform X, Hegseth shared a video of the attack, which he identified as taking place near the coast of Venezuela.
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The footage shows a small, narrow boat clipping across the waves before the air strike halts its momentum, leaving the vessel engulfed in flames.
Hegseth explained he directed the attack. “Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike, and no U.S. forces were harmed in the operation,” he wrote.
“The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people.”
The latest attack follows three similar US air strikes last month, the first of which took place on September 2. Eleven people were killed in that initial attack. A second and third strike — on September 15 and 19 respectively — killed three people a piece.
In each case, the administration of President Donald Trump has argued that the boats’ occupants were narcotics traffickers headed to the US, though no evidence has been provided for those assertions and the suspects have not yet been identified.
That assertion was repeated in Friday’s announcement from Hegseth, who said that the US intelligence community had identified the latest target.
He also pledged to continue carrying out air strikes on boats in the Caribbean region until the drug-trafficking ended.
“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,” Hegseth wrote. “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”
Trump himself weighed in, asserting on Truth Social that the boat “loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE”.
Legal experts, however, have warned that the attacks appear to violate international law, which largely prohibits extrajudicial killings outside of combat.
Traditionally, drug-trafficking has also not been considered an “attack” under the United Nations Charter, which establishes a right to “self-defence if an armed attack occurs”.
But the Trump administration has sought to frame the illicit drug trade as an act of aggression against the US.
In a news briefing on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued that the air strikes fell under the president’s “ constitutional authority as commander-in-chief” of the US armed forces, and she said Trump was personally involved in the attacks.
“As the White House has said many times, the president has directed these actions, these strikes, against Venezuelan drug cartels and these boats, consistent with his responsibility to protect the United States’ interests abroad,” Leavitt said.
This week, media reports also emerged that the administration presented a confidential memo to Congress, asserting that the president had “determined” that the US was engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, which it labelled as “unlawful combatants”.
The memo allegedly cited the attacks on the boats in the Caribbean as justification for the new designation, which has been previously been understood to refer to internal conflicts, like a civil war.
Under the US Constitution, Congress is the only branch of government authorised to declare war, and it has not formally authorised the strikes on the boats.
Since February, the Trump administration has also labelled various Latin American drug cartels and criminal networks as “foreign terrorist organisations”.
That includes the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua, which Trump has accused of being masterminded by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, despite a declassified US intelligence report in May finding no such connection.
The US air strikes on boats near Venezuela have heightened tensions with the Maduro government, which has ordered a build-up of military forces along the South American country’s coast.
Likewise, the US has stepped up its military presence in the Caribbean, sending fighter jets to bases in Puerto Rico and other locations.
Trump has cited the unsubstantiated connection between Maduro and Tren de Aragua to justify his use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been challenged repeatedly in court.
Just last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law — only employed three times prior, during times of war — had been “improperly invoked”.
It also found no credible evidence that “an invasion or a predatory incursion has occurred”, as the Trump administration has argued.
Still, in August, reports emerged that Trump had secretly signed an order authorising military force against the cartels.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to confirm the reports, saying the US would “target these groups if we have an opportunity to do it”.
Such action, however, has prompted outcry from human rights advocates, legal experts and even former US military officials.
“Four more people were killed this morning,” Tess Bridgeman, a visiting scholar at New York University’s law school, posted on the social media platform BlueSky.
She noted that “Trump has offered no definition or limiting principle for who can be labeled a ‘terrorist’ and summarily killed”.
“If it can happen at sea, it can happen anywhere,” she added.
