US Expands Controversial ‘Narco-Boat’ Bombing Campaign in the Pacific

The White House confirmed Wednesday that US forces have carried out yet another airstrike on a boat accused of drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing four men, days after similar attacks left 14 people dead.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on X that the “Department of War,” as the Trump administration has rebranded the Pentagon, conducted a “lethal kinetic strike” on what he called a “narco-trafficking vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization.”

“This vessel, like all the others, was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling,” Hegseth wrote, posting aerial footage of the explosion. No evidence has yet been released to the public, and none of the victims have been identified.

The strike, conducted in international waters, marks at least the 14th US attack on small maritime targets since early September. According to official tallies, 61 people have now been killed in what Washington describes as a counter-narcotics campaign, one that legal experts increasingly view as a breach of international law.

Miroslav Jenca, UN assistant secretary-general for the Americas, warned earlier this month that “all efforts to counter transnational organised crime must be conducted in accordance with international law.”

Critics argue that the US campaign amounts to extrajudicial killing and could violate the UN Charter, which forbids the use of military force against noncombatants outside a declared conflict zone.

The Trump administration, however, insists that the strikes fall under the banner of a “non-international armed conflict” against what it calls “narco-terrorists.” Officials say congressional authorization is unnecessary.

Hegseth has defended the strikes as part of a broader effort to “defend our own homeland,” adding that after decades of fighting overseas, the US military is now “targeting threats at our doorstep.”

The latest strike came as President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, during a regional tour that has also taken him to Malaysia and Japan.