The U.S. military on Monday launched three strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Colombia.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that the strikes killed at least 14 people and left one survivor. He said no U.S. forces were harmed during the operation and that Mexican authorities assumed responsibility of finding the one missing survivor.
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"Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out three lethal kinetic strikes on four vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTO) trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific," Hegseth said in a statement. "The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics."
The U.S. military began carrying out strikes against suspected drug-smuggling in early September, initially spacing them weeks apart. But Monday marked the first time multiple strikes were carried out in a single day — a shift in the Trump administration's intensified approach to combating drug trafficking.
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"The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own," Hegseth said. "These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them."
The Pentagon announced last week that the U.S. was sending the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and its strike group to the waters off South America. Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said it was to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States."
Earlier this month, President Trump identified drug cartels as unlawful combatants and declared the U.S. was in a "non-international armed conflict," according to a memo obtained by Scripps News. It came after the U.S. carried out strikes on boats operating in the Caribbean.
