In a significant operation targeting drug trafficking, three suspected narco-terrorists were killed by a U.S. strike on a vessel associated with Colombia’s National Liberation Army. This was confirmed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Sunday.

The “lethal kinetic strike” was carried out on Friday in international waters, as authorized by President Donald Trump, according to Hegseth’s statement on social media platform X.

“Our intelligence had identified the vessel as being involved in illicit narcotics smuggling. It was navigating a notorious drug trafficking route and carrying a substantial load of narcotics,” Hegseth explained. “During the operation, three male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed. The strike took place in international waters.”

He assured that no U.S. forces were harmed during the operation.

Hegseth also released unclassified footage capturing the strike’s execution.

The vessel had ties to Colombia’s National Liberation Army, known locally as Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), Hegseth noted.

Colombia’s Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) is a Designated Terrorist Organization. Hegseth likened the Colombian rebel group to the Al Qaeda terror group founded by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Hegseth said the vessel was trafficking narcotics. (Department of War)

“These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder and terrorism to impose their will, threaten our national security and poison our people,” Hegseth wrote. “The United States military will treat these organizations like the terrorists they are—they will be hunted, and killed, just like Al Qaeda.”

Hegseth attends a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, after a meeting of NATO Defence Ministers at the Alliance headquarters, in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 15, 2025. (Reuters/Yves Herman)

Colombian President Gustavo Petro disputed that the vessel was affiliated with ELN, calling it a fishing boat that belonged to a “humble family.”

“The fisherman’s boat from Santa Marta was not from the ELN; it belonged to a humble family, lovers of the sea, from which they drew their food,” Petro wrote in a post on X. “What do you say to that family? Explain to me why you helped assassinate a humble fisherman from Santa Marta, the land where Bolívar died, and which they say is the heart of the world.”

“What do you say to the family of the fisherman Alejandro Carranza? He was a humble human being,” Petro continued.

The Friday strike brings the death toll from the Trump administration’s military campaign against suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the region to at least 31. The operations began last month and are part of Trump’s broader effort to dismantle transnational cartels by force.

On Thursday, the U.S. military carried out a strike on what Trump later called a “very large drug-carrying submarine” in the Caribbean, killing two suspected narco-terrorists and capturing two others alive.

Fox News previously confirmed that two survivors were rescued by the U.S. Navy after the strike and were being held aboard an American warship.

A separate strike on Tuesday killed six suspected smugglers aboard a vessel off the coast of Venezuela.