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The United States military carried out a lethal strike on a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, killing two alleged drug smugglers, according to the White House.
The strike is the first known US military operation in the Pacific since President Donald Trump started what it says is a new military offensive against the drug trade.
Since the campaign’s inception, the Caribbean has witnessed at least seven strikes and numerous targeted fatalities, sparking significant legal debates. Central to these concerns is the absence of any judicial oversight, a factor that many find troubling.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the most recent strike on the social media platform X.
“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth said, without providing evidence.
He posted a roughly 30-second video on X, which appeared to show a vessel travelling in the water before exploding.
Hegseth said the boat targeted in the Pacific was “being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organisation”.
“Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbour anywhere in our hemisphere,” Hegseth said.
Questions linger over the administration’s decision to execute a strike in this particular situation, rather than opting to intercept the vessel. The reasoning behind this choice remains shrouded in mystery, prompting further scrutiny and calls for transparency.
This week’s lethal strike is the eighth since September and comes against the backdrop of a US military buildup in the Caribbean that includes guided missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear submarine and around 6,500 troops.
The strikes in the Caribbean have killed at least 32 people, but the Trump administration has provided few details, such as how many alleged drugs the targeted vessels were carrying or what specific evidence it had to suggest they were carrying drugs.
Legal experts have questioned why the US military is carrying out the strikes instead of the Coast Guard, which is the main US maritime law enforcement agency.
The Trump administration has produced a classified legal opinion seeking to justify lethal strikes against a secret and expansive list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers, CNN has reported.
Legal experts have previously told CNN that this classified legal opinion is significant as it treats drug traffickers as enemy combatants who can be summarily killed without any kind of judicial review.
In August, the Coast Guard launched an operation, known as Operation Viper, to interdict drugs in the Pacific Ocean, and says it has seized more than 45,000kg of cocaine since.
