US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the US had carried out another strike against a ship alleged to belong to drug traffickers.
The operation took place in the Caribbean Sea, against a group Hegseth identified as the Tren de Aragua criminal organisation.
Hegseth said “six male narco-terrorists” were on board and killed.
The US has carried out a series of strikes on ships in the region, in what President Donald Trump has described as an effort to curtail drug trafficking.
Hegseth posted a video on X showing the operation. It begins by showing a boat in crosshairs, before it explodes into a cloud of smoke.
The Pentagon also announced later Friday that it would send the Gerald Ford carrier strike group to the US Southern Command area of responsibility, which includes Central America and South America as well as the Caribbean.
The additional forces “will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs”, or transnational criminal organisations, spokesman Sean Parnell said.
The strike announced on Friday is the tenth the Trump administration has carried out against alleged drug traffickers since early September. Most have taken place off of South America, in the Caribbean, but on 21 and 22 October it carried out strikes in the Pacific Ocean.
Members of US Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have raised concerns about the legality of the strikes and the president’s authority to order them.
On 10 September, 25 Democratic US senators wrote to the White House and alleged the administration had struck a vessel days earlier “without evidence that the individuals on the vessel and the vessel’s cargo posed a threat to the United States.”
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, has argued that such strikes require congressional approval.
Trump said he has the legal authority to order the strikes, and has designated Tren de Aragua a terrorist organisation.
“We’re allowed to do that, and if we do (it) by land, we may go back to Congress,” Trump told White House reporters on Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that “if people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States”.
The six deaths in the operation Hegseth announced Friday brings the total people killed in the US strikes to at least 43.
It is still widely believed that these strikes are not only about drug trafficking but also about putting military pressure on the government of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
He is a longtime foe of Donald Trump who has long accused him of being the leader of a drug-trafficking organisation, something he denies.
By BBC News
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