US hits eighth drug boat in deadly strike — first attack on Pacific side kills crew | US | News
President Donald Trump reportedly ordered the eighth known attack on an alleged drug ship in Latin American waters on Tuesday evening, leaving two people dead.
The attack occurred on Tuesday evening on the Pacific side of South America, two US officials told CBS News. At least 34 people lost their lives US attacked ships allegedly involved in drug smuggling It starts in September. Each There was a strike in the Caribbean. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the attack via X on Wednesday.
“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the War Department conducted a deadly kinetic attack on a drug-smuggling ship in the Eastern Pacific operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization,” Hegseth said. he wrote. “The ship was known to our intelligence to be involved in illegal narcotics smuggling, was passing through a known drug smuggling transit route and was carrying narcotics.
“There were two narco-terrorists on the ship during the attack in international waters. Both terrorists were killed in this attack, and no US forces were harmed.” “Narco-terrorists who seek to bring poison to our shores will find no safe haven anywhere in our hemisphere. These cartels are waging war on our border and our people, just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland. There will be neither refuge nor forgiveness; there will be only justice.”
The Trump administration told Congress: US faces “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
Vice President J.D. Vance later told reporters: He doesn’t care what happens to the two alleged narcoterrorists in the seventh attack Those who were repatriated because they were most concerned that the drugs would not fall into American hands.
When asked why the two surviving men were repatriated rather than tried in the United States, Vance said, “What happens to them? I really don’t care as long as they don’t bring poison into our country.”
His comments come as the United States grapples with an ongoing mental health and drug crisis, with thousands dying each year from what health officials call “deaths of despair.”
