US carries out another deadly attack on suspected drug ship off Venezuela, Trump says

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he ordered another deadly military strike against a ship off the coast of Venezuela in what appears to be the fifth such attack in the Caribbean Sea, killing six people.

Both Trump and Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense posted a video of the attack, showing what appeared to be a speedboat hit by a sudden explosion. Trump said the ship was affiliated with an unnamed “designated terrorist organization engaged in drug trafficking.”

Trump said: “Intelligence confirmed that the ship was trafficking narcotics” and “was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks…” was in “International Waters” and that “six male narcoterrorists aboard the ship were killed in the attack.”

Since September 2, Trump has ordered military strikes at least five ships in the Caribbean Sea that the administration insists were carrying drugs to the U.S. According to the government’s account, the military has killed 27 people.

The use of lethal military force against drugs ships is unprecedented, as previous administrations relied on law enforcement to intercept drug shipments. Posting videos of the attacks on social media, Hegseth and Trump did not provide details about who was killed, their nationalities, what type of drugs they were carrying or where exactly they were headed.

Instead, Trump has told lawmakers that he sees drug traffickers as “terrorists” and “illegal combatants” and that the United States is in “armed conflict” with the cartels.

Trump has ordered the Pentagon to create a new military task force “to crush the cartels” that transport drugs to the United States, an indication that the administration is planning to expand military operations in Latin America even as lawmakers and independent experts have questioned the legality of using military force against criminal organizations.

Last week, in a post on

“By order of the President, the War Department is establishing a new Joint Counternarcotics Task Force in the SOUTHCOM area of ​​responsibility to crush the cartels, stop the poison, and keep America safe,” Hegseth wrote. “The message is clear: if they traffic drugs to our shores, we will stop them in their tracks.”

SOUTHCOM referred all questions about the attack to the White House, which declined to say who exactly was on the ship and where exactly it was located.