US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday that the US had carried out another strike on a ship believed to be owned by drug traffickers.
The operation took place in the Caribbean against the Hegseth group, identified as the criminal organization Tren de Aragua.
Hegseth said “six male narco-terrorists” were on board and were killed.
USA carried out a series of strikes on ships in the region in what President Donald Trump has called an effort to reduce drug trafficking.
Hegseth posted a video on X showing the operation. It begins by showing a boat in crosshairs before it explodes in a cloud of smoke.
This is the tenth strike the Trump administration has launched against alleged drug traffickers since early September. Most of them occurred off the coast of South America, in the Caribbean, but on October 21 and 22 they struck in the Pacific Ocean.
Members of the US Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed concerns about the legality of the strikes and the president's authority to order them.
On Sept. 10, 25 Democratic U.S. senators wrote a letter to the White House saying the administration struck the ship days earlier “without evidence that the ship's people and cargo posed a threat to the United States.”
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican, argues that such strikes require congressional approval.
Trump said he had the legal authority to order the strikes and declared Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization.
“We are allowed to do this, and if we do it overland, we can 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 ships blowing up, stop sending drugs to the United States.”
The six deaths in the operation, which Hegseth announced on Friday, bring the total death toll from US strikes to at least 43.
It is still widely believed that the strikes are aimed not only at drug trafficking, but also at exerting military pressure on the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
He is a longtime opponent of Donald Trump, who has long accused him of being the leader of a drug trafficking organization, which he denies.
