US forces have carried out another strike on a vessel suspected of drug trafficking — this time in the Pacific Ocean — killing two people on board, the Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the vessel was already on US intelligence radar and was believed to be moving narcotics along a well-known trafficking route in international waters. No American personnel were injured in the operation.
This marks the eighth strike by US forces on suspected drug boats since September 2, but the first to take place in the Pacific.
Footage released by the Pentagon appears to show a long, blue speedboat racing across open water moments before it was hit by US munitions.
“Narco-terrorists who threaten our people will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere,” Hegseth wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Just as Al Qaeda once waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our citizens. There will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”
A recently leaked memo to US lawmakers revealed that the Trump administration has classified its actions as part of a “non-international armed conflict” against drug-trafficking organizations.
At least 36 people have been killed in similar strikes so far, including a recent attack on a semi-submersible “narco-sub” in the Caribbean. Two men survived a strike last week and were sent back to Colombia and Ecuador.
Ecuador later released one of them — identified as Andrés Fernando Tufiño — citing a lack of evidence of criminal activity. The Colombian survivor reportedly remains hospitalized.
President Donald Trump and senior officials have repeatedly defended the strikes as a necessary extension of the US’s counter-narcotics mission. Several of the targeted groups have been designated as terrorist organizations by Washington.
According to CBS News, the latest strike occurred in international waters near Colombia — a country now at odds with the Trump administration.
On Sunday, Trump publicly accused Colombian President Gustavo Petro of being a “drug leader” who “encourages massive drug production across Colombia.” He also announced that the US would end subsidies to the South American nation, historically one of Washington’s closest allies in the region.
Experts note that Colombia and Ecuador’s Pacific coastlines are major corridors for cocaine shipments headed north through Central America and Mexico. The DEA estimates that most cocaine bound for US cities now travels via Pacific routes, while Caribbean smuggling — where most prior US strikes have occurred — still represents a smaller but growing share.
The Pentagon has not released the identities of those killed in the operations or confirmed which cartels they were affiliated with.
Currently, about 10,000 US troops, supported by dozens of aircraft and naval vessels, are deployed across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific as part of the ongoing counter-narcotics campaign. Photo by ---=XEON=---, Wikimedia commons.