The US military announced the killing of another two men in “a lethal kinetic strike”on a boat suspected of carrying drugs in international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Monday.
The Pentagon released video of the strike, which brings the total number of known naval attacks on suspected drug smugglers to 30 since September, and raises the death toll to at least 107 people, according to US military figures.
The attack was carried out “at the direction of” Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, US Southern Command said in a post on X, the Elon Musk-owned social media platform where images of the attacks have been posted.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the military said. “No US military forces were harmed.”
Donald Trump has justified the attacks on suspected drug smugglers with the false claim that each shipment would have led to the deaths of 25,000 Americans.
Over the weekend, the president told a supporter on a New York radio show that the US had “knocked out … a big plant, or a big facility … where the ships come from” in Venezuela last week, a strike that was not disclosed, if it happened.
Asked by reporters on Monday about those remarks, Trump insisted that the strike had taken place. “There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump told reporters ahead of a lunch for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Florida. Trump, the White House and the Pentagon have provided no other details. “So we hit all the boats and now we hit the area,” the president said, “it’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”
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