The US military bombed a total of four alleged drug boats in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on Monday, US War Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced.
The series of attacks marks the first time that the US has bombed multiple boats in one day, and it brings the total number of vessels the US has struck since the campaign started on September 2 to 14, including eight that were hit in the Caribbean near Venezuela and six targeted in the Eastern Pacific.
As usual, Hegseth offered no evidence to back up the claim that the boats were carrying drugs and provided no information about the people who were killed, whom he labeled “narco-terrorists,” a term the Trump administration is using to justify the extrajudicial executions for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the United States.
Hegseth said 14 “narco-terrorists” were killed, bringing the total number of executions at sea to 57, according to numbers released by the administration. Hegseth also said that one person survived the strike and that Mexican authorities accepted responsibility for rescuing the survivor.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed that Mexico had rescued one person, and the Mexican Navy said it was conducting search-and-rescue operations about 400 miles southwest of the Mexican city of Acapulco. Sheinbaum has previously criticized the US bombing campaign targeting boats in the region, saying that she does not “agree” with the policy.
“There are international laws on how to operate when dealing with the alleged illegal transport of drugs or guns on international waters, and we have expressed this to the government of the United States and publicly,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference last week.
In his announcement, Hegseth made clear that the US bombing campaign will continue and drew parallels to the War on Terror. “The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them,” he said.
The US military has also continued its campaign in the Caribbean aimed at toppling Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. On Monday, the US conducted its third bomber flight near Venezuela’s coast, and the War Department recently announced that it is deploying an aircraft carrier to the region.
