US Military Kills Three Alleged Drug Smugglers in Latest Strike in the Caribbean Sea

WASHINGTON, DC – The United States on Saturday continued its military strikes in the Caribbean, killing three alleged drug smugglers in the latest lethal strike.  

Peter Hegseth“Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on another narco-trafficking vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) in the Caribbean,” said US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in making the announcement on X, formerly Twitter.

“This vessel—like EVERY OTHER—was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” he added. 

“Narco-terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home,” continued Hegseth, stating that the US military “will treat them EXACTLY how we treated Al-Qaeda.”

The US Department of War said that at least 64 drug smugglers have been killed in 15 military attacks on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since the beginning of September.

On Friday, several US Democratic senators requested an “urgent briefing” by Trump administration officials on the military strikes in the Caribbean, urging them to “provide all legal opinions related to these strikes and a list of the groups or other entities the president has deemed targetable.

“To date, the administration has failed to provide the full Senate with the basic information necessary to carry out its oversight responsibilities, including the identities of the groups against which the president has authorized the use of military force—even as reports increase that the administration is planning additional strikes inside Venezuela,” said the legislators in their letter addressed to Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  

The letter was signed by, among others, Senate Minority Leader Charles “Chuck” Schumer, Jack Reed, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, Chris Coons, Patty Murray and Brian Schatz.

Meanwhile , Caribbean Caucus Co-Chairs in the US House of Representatives, Caribbean-American Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke and Congresswoman Maxine Wate, have condemned, “in the strongest possible terms, the Trump administration’s unilateral and unlawful military strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean.”

Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who represents the 9th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York, is also chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Waters, considered a friend of the Caribbean, represents the 43rd Congressional District in California.

“These strikes, and the president’s policy of ‘kill first, ask questions never,’ that undergirds them, are an affront to both,” said Clarke and Waters in a joint statement on Friday.

“Every American knows how dire the drug and opioid crisis is. Every American recognizes how deeply action is needed to defeat it. However, when the Trump administration continues to reassign federal agents away from their work on this crisis and toward a sickening anti-immigrant American crusade, and when it has repeatedly cut congressionally approved funding for proven drug prevention and treatment programs, the depths of Donald Trump’s disinterest in truly solving the issue at hand becomes abundantly clear, As does the true purpose of these attacks, which is seemingly only to demonstrate the Trump administration’s power for violence to our allies and adversaries alike,” they added. “Enough is enough.

“Before more innocent lives are taken beyond those which likely already have been, before more maimed remains of those Donald Trump extrajudicially bombed wash upon the shores of our Caribbean neighbors, and before more of America’s friends are alienated in the name of intimidating our rivals, these strikes must end,” Clarke and Waters demanded. “And the American people must receive answers to the many questions they have had since the strikes began.”

The United Nations UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also strongly condemned airstrikes carried out by the United States against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.

Volker Türk said in a statement that the strikes “violate international human rights law”, demanding that they be stopped immediately.

Türk said that more than 60 people have reportedly been killed in the continuing series of attacks since early September “in circumstances that find no justification in international law.”

He urged the Trump administration to halt its “unacceptable” operations and take measures to prevent the “extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.”