U.S. strikes alleged drug-carrying boat in Pacific Ocean

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. military carried out its ninth strike on a suspected drug ship Wednesday, killing three people in eastern Pacific waters, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday, further expanding the Trump administration's campaign against drug trafficking in South America.

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Wednesday's strike followed one Tuesday night, also in the Eastern Pacific, that left two people dead, Hegseth said.

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The attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday were different from seven previous U.S. strikes targeting ships in the Caribbean. They said the death toll from the attacks that began last month has reached at least 37 people.

The strikes represent an expansion of the military's reach as well as a move into South American waters, where much of the cocaine from the world's largest producers is smuggled out. Hegseth's social media posts also draw direct comparisons between the war on terrorism that the United States declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration's crackdown.

“Just as al-Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels wage war on our border and on our people,” Hegseth said, adding that “there will be no refuge or forgiveness – only justice.”

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Later on Wednesday, he called the alleged drug traffickers “the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere.”

Republican President Donald Trump justified the strikes by saying the United States was engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and declaring the criminal organizations illegal combatants, drawing on the same legal powers that President George W. Bush's administration used for the war on terrorism.

Trump said land strikes could be next

Asked about the latest attack on the boat, Trump said “we have the legal authority. We're allowed to do it.” He said similar strikes could eventually occur on land.

“We will hit them very hard when they come overland,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We are fully prepared to do this. And we will probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we will do when we come to this land.”

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Lawmakers from both political parties have expressed concern that Trump ordered the military action without obtaining congressional authorization or providing many details.

Speaking alongside Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended such strikes, saying: “If people want to stop seeing drug ships blowing up, stop sending drugs into the United States.”

Trump said the strikes he was ordering were meant to save Americans and “the only way to not be upset about it… is to realize that every time you see this happen, you're saving 25,000 lives.”

Attack on a boat on the street to smuggle cocaine

The first short video Hegseth posted Wednesday showed a small boat half filled with brown bags moving through the water. A few seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless through the water on fire.

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The second video showed the other boat moving quickly before it was hit by an explosion. The video, apparently taken after the explosion, shows bags floating in the water.

Since this summer, the U.S. military has amassed an unusually large presence in the Caribbean Sea and waters off Venezuela, fueling speculation that Trump might try to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro charged with narco-terrorism in the US

In his messages about the strikes, Trump has repeatedly argued that illegal drugs and fentanyl carried on ships are poisoning Americans.

Although the bulk of overdose deaths in America involve fentanyl, the drug is shipped overland from Mexico. Venezuela is a major drug transit area, but the main area for cocaine smuggling is the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.

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Colombia and Peru, countries with coastlines in the eastern Pacific Ocean, are the world's largest producers of cocaine. In between is Ecuador, whose world-class ports and abundance of shipping containers filled with bananas have become an ideal means for drug traffickers to move their products.

The administration has avoided prosecuting people on suspected drug ships after returning two survivors of an earlier strike to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

Ecuadorian officials later said they released the returned man because they had no evidence he had committed a crime in their country.

Questions from Congress as strikes continue

Some Republican lawmakers have asked the White House for more clarification on the legal rationale and specifics of the strikes, while Democrats insist they are a violation of U.S. and international law.

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Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was alarmed and angry about the lack of information about the strikes.

“The geographic expansion simply expands the lawlessness and recklessness of the use of the American military without apparent legal or practical justification,” Blumenthal said.

He said cracking down on the drug trade would involve stopping ships and interrogating those on board to find the source of the drugs, “rather than just eliminating the smugglers who are likely at the bottom of the smuggling chain.”

The Republican-controlled Senate recently rejected a Democratic-backed war powers resolution, largely along party lines, that would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said he met with Rubio.

“He has carefully reviewed the legal implications and believes we are on solid ground in the fight against these narco-terrorists,” Kennedy said. “I trust his judgment.”

— Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Kevin Freking in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

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