CBS News- The U.S. struck another alleged drug vessel Tuesday night, this time on the Pacific side of South America, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed Wednesday.
In what is the eighth known U.S. attack on a boat since Sept. 2, two individuals aboard the vessel were killed, Hegseth said. The other seven strikes targeted vessels in the Caribbean.
Hegseth wrote on social media that the Defense Department conducted the strike at President Trump’s direction and alleged the vessel was operated by a “designated terrorist organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific.”
He continued: “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. There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters.”
Hegseth said no U.S. forces were harmed in the strike. He also shared a video of the strike, in which viewers see a vessel moving through the water, and then hit and engulfed in flames.
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” “We want to keep fentanyl out of the United States, … but those routes through the Caribbean on boats are predominantly used to bring cocaine to Europe,” not to the U.S. And fentanyl tends to be transported to to the U.S. “from a different way,” Kelly added.
Kelly also told “Face the Nation” that when administration officials briefed Congress on the drug vessel strikes, they “had a very hard time explaining to us the rationale, the legal rationale for doing this and the constitutionality of doing it.” He said lawmakers were told there is “a secret list of over 20 narco organizations, drug trafficking cartels,” but U.S. officials did not share the list with Congress.
At least 34 people have been killed in U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats. The Trump administration has told Congress the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, arguing that the narcotics they smuggle kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, and this constitutes an “armed attack.”
Two men survived a U.S. strike on a suspected drug-trafficking submersible vessel in the Caribbean last week, and the U.S. repatriated the men, one from Ecuador and one from Colombia. Ecuador released the man, identified as Andrés Fernando Tufiño, after authorities said they had found no evidence that he had committed a crime.
The Colombian citizen remains hospitalized after his repatriation. Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said he “arrived with brain trauma, sedated, drugged, breathing with a ventilator.” Authorities there said he would face prosecution. Two other men were killed in the strike on the submersible vessel.
