U.S. Strikes Another Alleged Drug-Trafficking Boat In Eastern Pacific | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. navy mentioned Thursday that it has carried out one other lethal strike on a vessel accused of trafficking medicine within the jap Pacific Ocean.

U.S. Southern Command mentioned on social media that the boat “was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” It mentioned the strike killed two folks. A video linked to the submit exhibits a ship transferring by means of the water earlier than exploding in flames.

The strike was introduced simply hours after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that “some top cartel drug-traffickers” within the area “have decided to cease all narcotics operations INDEFINITELY due to recent (highly effective) kinetic strikes in the Caribbean.” However, Hegseth didn’t present any particulars or data to again up this declare, made in a submit on his private account on social media.

Neither U.S. Southern Command nor the Pentagon would reply follow-up questions on Hegseth’s declare.

Thursday’s strike raises the loss of life toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to 128 folks. Last week, the navy mentioned that determine was as much as 126 folks, with the inclusion of these presumed useless after being misplaced at sea. That determine included 116 individuals who had been killed instantly in a minimum of 36 assaults carried out since early September within the Caribbean Sea and jap Pacific Ocean, U.S. Southern Command mentioned. Ten others are believed useless as a result of searchers didn’t find them following a strike.

Thursday’s strike is the second recognized assault because the raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro final month.

President Donald Trump has mentioned the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the assaults as a vital escalation to stem the circulate of medicine. But his administration has supplied little proof to assist its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”