Pete Hegseth with dire warning for Caribbean boaters after new ‘lethal kinetic strike’

There are US military forces Another boat allegedly involved in drug smuggling was stuck inside caribbeandestroyed the ship and killed all six people on board.

Minister of War Pete Hegseth He announced the move in a social media post claiming that his department had carried out what he called a “deadly kinetic attack” on the ship, which he claimed was operated by members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.

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He also said all six people on board were killed in the attack and called them “terrorists,” in line with the Trump administration’s definition of “terrorists.” Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you the same way we treat Al Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, capture and kill you,” Hegseth added.

Hegseth’s announcement brings to more than 40 the death toll from multiple attacks in both the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean in the Trump administration’s weeks-long campaign against alleged drug trafficking.

The latest attack comes just a day after the Pentagon boss announced a pair of attacks that killed a total of five people; Two people were killed, one in an attack on a boat off the coast of Colombia and the other on Wednesday that left three more dead.

As of Friday, there had been ten U.S. attacks by military forces on ships allegedly smuggling drugs, in what the Trump administration has described as a war against foreign drug cartels.

Critics defended the campaign means illegal extrajudicial executionMembers of Congress and civil rights groups are pressing the administration for evidence and legal memos shared among White House officials to justify the attacks.

So far the administration has been reluctant to share the intelligence used to select the boats targeted or the legal reasoning behind the attacks. While the administration continues to describe those killed as “terrorists,” two survivors of a recent attack in the Caribbean were repatriated rather than detained.

The apparent repatriation of individuals labeled “terrorists” by the government rather than face prosecution in the United States also raises additional legal questions about the operations, including whether survivors will be treated as wartime detainees or transferred to military or criminal authorities for prosecution.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the US attack in September targeted an endangered civilian boat, not a drug-smuggling ship. and accused Trump of “murder.”

Trump called Petro an “illegal drug leader” on Truth Social and accused his government of “robbed” of American aid.

The majority of cocaine smuggled into the United States comes from the Pacific Ocean, but the Trump administration has largely focused its attacks on the Venezuelan coast and the Caribbean in a military-led campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

While the Trump administration declared that the United States had entered what it called an “armed conflict” with the drug cartels, the President Donald Trump Calling them “unlawful combatants,” meaning an invocation of wartime authority to justify the use of force, Trump said he would not ask Congress to greenlight his actions despite clear provisions in the U.S. Constitution reserving the legislature the power to declare war.

At a roundtable on anti-drug efforts at the White House on Thursday, Trump rejected a request to declare war or authorize the use of military force against the cartels or South American governments that he claimed were responsible for supporting the cartels.

“I don’t think we’re going to call for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people who bring drugs into our country, okay? We’re going to kill them,” Trump said.

Alex Woodward contributed reporting from New York