Washington– The US military said on Thursday that it had carried out another operation A fatal blow on a ship Accused of drug trafficking in the Eastern Pacific.
The boat “was passing along known drug smuggling routes in the eastern Pacific and was participating in drug smuggling operations,” US Southern Command said on social media. She added that the raid killed two people. A video linked to the post shows a boat moving through the water before it explodes and catches fire.
The strike was announced just hours after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “certain major drug traffickers” in the region “have decided to halt all drug operations indefinitely due to recent (highly effective) kinetic strikes in the Caribbean.” However, Hegseth did not provide any details or information to support this claim, in a post on his personal account on social media.
Neither US Southern Command nor the Pentagon responded to follow-up questions about Hegseth’s claim.
The pace of the boat attacks, which began in September 2025, has slowed since January – a month that saw only one subsequent strike. The raid that led to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. By contrast, the Pentagon struck more than a dozen boats in December 2025.
Thursday’s attack brings the death toll from Trump administration strikes on alleged drug boats to 128 people. Last week, the military said that number had reached 126, including people presumed dead after being lost at sea. The US Southern Command said this number includes 116 people killed instantly in at least 36 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Ten others are believed to have died because searchers could not find them after the raid.
Meanwhile, the families of two Trinidadian nationals were killed in an accident Trump administration boat strike in OctoberShe filed a lawsuit against the federal government last weekHe described the attack as a war crime and part of an “unprecedented and clearly illegal US military campaign.” The lawsuit is believed to be the first wrongful death case to arise from the campaign, and will test the legal justification for the attacks, which many experts say are a crime. A flagrant violation of the laws from armed conflict.
President Donald Trump said the United States is in “armed conflict” with gangs in Latin America and has already done so Justify the attacks As a necessary escalation to stop the flow of drugs. But his administration has provided little evidence to support its claims of killing “narco-terrorists.”