President Donald Trump said on Friday that the US military has carried out its third fatal strike against an alleged drug smuggling vessel this month.
Trump, in a social media posting, said the strike killed three and was carried out against a vessel “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narco-trafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility.” He did not provide more precise details about the location of the strike.
The Pentagon deferred questions about the strike to the White House, which did not respond to a request for clarity about the origins of the vessel. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans,” Trump said in the post. Trump also posted a video of the latest strike that shows a vessel speeding through the waters before it appears to be struck by a pair of missiles from overhead and sinks in a fiery explosion.
“It was at this moment that the narcoterrorists knew they screwed up,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said on X in a posting with the video.
Trump on Monday announced the US military had carried out a strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. That strike also killed three on board.
That followed a September 2 military strike on what the Trump administration said was a drug-carrying speedboat that killed 11. Trump claimed the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, which was listed by the US as foreign terrorist organisation.