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14 alleged drug smugglers killed in US military strikes in Pacific ocean
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated the strikes were authorized by President Trump as part of an armed conflict against drug cartels.
The US military on Monday carried out strikes in the eastern portion of the Pacific ocean killing 14 alleged drug smugglers.
The strikes, which were targeted towards four vessels left just one survivor, US defence secreatary Pete Hegseth wrote on his official X handle today.
“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 wrote.
He further claimed that the four vessels were known by US intelligence apparatus as transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics.
Hegseth posted footage of the latest strikes to social media in which two boats can be seen moving through the water in separate clips. One is visibly laden with a large amount of parcels or bundles. Both then suddenly explode and are seen in flames.
According to Hegseth's post, eight male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessels during the first strike, four during the second strike and three during the third strike.
The third strike appears to have been conducted on a pair of boats that were stationary in the water alongside each other. They appear to be largely empty, with at least two people seen moving before an explosion engulfs both boats.
After the troops rescued the survivor from the ship, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated search and rescue (SAR) standard protocols. Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.
Hegseth added that the United States has spent over two decades defending other homelands, and this time they are defending their own. Drawing parallels from the infamous 9/11 attacks, he alleged that these narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and that they will be treated the same.
“We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them,” he wrote.
US attacks on South American waters
Carried out Monday, the strikes mark a continued escalation in the pace of the attacks in South American waters, which began in early September and had been spaced weeks apart.
The latest strike, was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day, were conducted off the coast of Colombia, news agency AP reported quoting a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Following one attack on a boat, the military spotted a person in the water clinging to some wreckage.
The military passed the survivor's precise location to the US Coast Guard and a Mexican military aircraft that was operating in the area.
In a strike earlier this month with two survivors, the US military rescued the pair and repatriated them to Colombia and Ecuador. Authorities released the Ecuadorian man after prosecutors said they had no evidence he committed a crime in Ecuador.
President Donald Trump also justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and proclaiming the criminal organisations to be unlawful combatants, relying on the same legal authority used by President George W. Bush's administration for the war on terrorism, the report read.
