WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said Wednesday that it had carried out “lethal” strikes against three suspected drug boats, killing three people.
“On Dec. 30, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted kinetic strikes against three narco-trafficking vessels traveling as a convoy,” U.S. Southern Command said on X, alleging that narcotics were transferred between the vessels before the strikes.
“Three narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel were killed in the first engagement,” Southern Command said. “The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels.”
The exact location of the strikes was not specified, nor was it clear from the statement how many people were aboard the two other vessels before they were struck. The statement added that the U.S. Coast Guard was notified after the strikes to activate its search-and-rescue operations.
NBC News has reached out to the Pentagon for more details.
The U.S. has carried out at least 30 known strikes since September on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing more than 100 people.
President Donald Trump in recent months has ramped up U.S. military presence in the region, as well as his rhetoric toward countries like Venezuela and Colombia.
In the past week, Trump said, the U.S. “knocked out” a facility tied to Venezuela.
“We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump told WABC radio of New York City in an interview Friday.
Trump has argued that the strikes on vessels are helping prevent the trafficking of narcotics into the U.S. and that the Venezuelan government is using oil revenue to finance “drug terrorism.”
In a Dec. 18 phone interview with NBC News, Trump declined to rule out a war with Venezuela. Earlier in the month, he ordered a blockade of “sanctioned oil tankers” to and from the country.
On Wednesday, the Treasury Department sanctioned four companies over operations in Venezuela’s oil sector.
