Hegseth: U.S. strikes another alleged drug-trafficking boat, killing 4

Oct. 29 (UPI) -- The U.S. military on Wednesday attacked another alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people in the strike, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said.

The attack was announced by Hegseth on social media. With the strike, the United States has conducted at least 14 attacks on purported drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September. The United States has killed more than 60 people in the strikes.

Until the first strike on Sept. 2, the United States had never used the military's lethal force to combat drug trafficking.

The Trump administration has defended the strikes as necessary to protect Americans from drugs, asserting that they comply with laws pertaining to "armed conflict."

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President Donald Trump has also designated a handful of drug cartels as terrorist organizations, as part of a policy aimed at targeting them and their alleged members for deportation. His administration has said vessels they have attacked belonged to those designated groups.

Critics argue it's abuse of military power, and could amount to a war crime. United Nations experts last month described the killings as "extrajudicial executions."

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused Trump of murder, killing a fisherman named Alejandro Carranza, in a mid-September strike.

"This vessel, like all the others, was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route and carrying narcotics," Hegseth said Wednesday in a statement announcing the most recent strike.

A video accompanying the social media statement showed a small outboard motor boat lolling on the water that is then seemingly struck by a missile and becomes engulfed in flames.

"The Western Hemisphere is no longer a safe haven for narco-terrorists bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans," Hegseth said, adding that the Department of Defense "will continue to hunt them down and eliminate them where ever they operate."

Hegseth said the strike was "at the direction of President Trump."

Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, a U.S. foreign policy research nonprofit organization, described Hegseth's statement as an admission Trump ordered the extrajudicial killings.

"Or in other words, murders."

"Hegseth's post alone provides prima facie evidence of the crimes' elements as well as his and Trump's culpability for them," he said on X.

"They should be held accountable."

The strike came on the same day the Trump administration held a military briefing for Republicans only.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., accused the Trump administration of withholding legally requested information from Democratic senators by eluding them.

He said it was "indefensible and dangerous."

"Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party," Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

"For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress' constitutional obligation to oversee matters of peace and war."

On Monday, Hegseth announced strikes against four vessels in the Eastern Pacific, killing 14 people. There was at least one survivor from the attacks.