President Donald Trump said Friday the U.S. military has carried out its third fatal strike against an alleged drug smuggling vessel this month.
Trump in a social media posting said the strike killed three and was carried out against a vessel “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility.” He did not provide more precise details about the location of the strike, and the White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans,” Trump said in the post.
Trump on Monday announced the U.S. military had carried out a strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. That strike also killed three on board.
That followed a Sept. 2 military strike on what the Trump administration said was a drug-carrying speedboat that killed 11. Trump claimed the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, which was listed by the U.S. as foreign terrorist organization earlier this year.
The Trump administration has justified the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.
But several senators, Democrats and some Republicans, as well as human rights groups have questioned the legality of Trump’s action. They view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part because the military was used for law enforcement purposes.