US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday that the US had carried out another attack on an alleged drug-smuggling ship.
The operation was against the Hegseth group known as the Tren de Aragua crime syndicate in the Caribbean.
Hegseth said “six male narco-terrorists” were on board and killed them.
U.S A series of strikes have been done on ships in the region, in what President Donald Trump has described as an effort to reduce drug trafficking.
Hegseth posted a video showing the operation on X. It begins with a finger pointing in the crosshairs, before exploding in a cloud of smoke.
This is the tenth strike by the Trump administration against alleged drug traffickers since early September. Most have occurred in the Caribbean, off South America, but strikes occurred in the Pacific Ocean on October 21 and 22.
Members of the US Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have raised concerns about the legality of the strikes and the president’s authority to order them.
On September 10, 25 Democratic U.S. senators wrote to the White House, alleging that the administration a few days earlier had “strike[d]the vessel without evidence that the persons on board and the vessel’s cargo pose a threat to the United States.”
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Republican, has argued that such a strike would require congressional approval.
Trump said he had the legal authority to order the strike and designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization.
“We’re allowed to do it, and if we do it (by land), 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 boats flying, stop sending drugs into the United States”.
The six deaths from the operation, announced by Hegseth on Friday, bring the total number of people killed in the US attack to at least 43.
It is still believed that the strikes are not only about drug trafficking, but also about military pressure on the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
He is a longtime foe of Donald Trump who has accused him of being the leader of a drug-trafficking organization, which he denies.
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