New U.S. Strike on Suspected Drug Boat in Pacific Kills Four

 

New U.S. Strike on Suspected Drug Boat in Pacific Kills Four

A U.S. military strike on a suspected drug-trafficking vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean killed four people on Thursday, amid rising controversy over a months-long campaign that has already claimed more than 87 lives.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump’s administration are facing intense criticism, particularly over a September incident in which U.S. forces struck the wreckage of a boat that had already been disabled—killing two survivors.

A senior Democratic lawmaker who viewed video of that earlier incident on Thursday said the footage showed U.S. forces attacking “shipwrecked sailors,” while some critics have described the operation as a potential war crime.

In a statement on X, U.S. Southern Command said the latest strike targeted “a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization.” Intelligence reports confirmed the boat was carrying illicit narcotics and traveling along a well-known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific.

“Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed,” the statement said. It also included video showing a multi-engine boat racing across the water moments before an explosion engulfed it in flames.

Earlier Thursday, lawmakers received a classified briefing on Capitol Hill, where they were shown extended footage of the strike—only a small portion of which has been publicly released.

Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters the video depicted “the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors—bad guys, yes—but shipwrecked sailors.”

‘No imminent threat’

Himes called the footage “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”

“You have two individuals clearly in distress, with no means of movement, on a destroyed vessel—yet they were killed by the United States,” he said.

Republican Representative Don Bacon told CNN that “these two people were trying to survive, and our rules of war do not allow us to kill survivors.”

“The rules require that they pose an imminent threat,” Bacon added. “And I think we can safely say they did not pose an imminent threat to our country.”

But Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who also attended the briefing, defended the action, saying, “The first strike, the second strike, and the third and fourth strikes on September 2nd were all entirely lawful and necessary—exactly what we expect our military commanders to do.”

Cotton claimed he saw “two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States so they could stay in the fight.”

Both the White House and the Pentagon have sought to distance Hegseth from the decision to strike the survivors, instead attributing the order to Admiral Frank Bradley, who oversaw the operation.

Himes said Bradley told lawmakers during the briefing that Hegseth did not direct that all the crew be killed. Bacon, however, argued that the defense secretary is still ultimately accountable because “he’s the secretary of defense.”

The Trump administration maintains that it is effectively at war with so-called “narco-terrorists.” The president has deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier and other major military assets to the Caribbean, insisting the buildup is part of counter-narcotics operations.

The strikes and military expansion have heightened regional tensions, with Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro accusing Washington of using drug-trafficking concerns as a pretext to pursue “regime change” in Caracas.