Trump says US hit drug-trafficking boat, killing 3 in strike

Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg News on Sep 19, 2025

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said that the United States had carried out a strike on a drug-trafficking vessel in international waters, killing three people on board, part of a campaign against cartels that have escalated tensions with Venezuela and some other Latin American nations.

“On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said on social media Friday evening. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”

It was unclear from Trump’s post when the attack had been carried out or if he was providing more details on a previously announced strike.

Trump has detailed two such strikes before and earlier this week he said that the U.S. had “knocked off” a third drug boat from Venezuela but did not provide additional information on that strike.

Trump has cast the campaign as an effort to halt the flow of drugs — and he has warned Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to stop sending narcotics and criminals from his country to the U.S.

The campaign has escalated tensions with Venezuela and prompted objections from some other Latin American governments.

Legal experts and some members of Congress in the U.S. have criticized the strikes, arguing the U.S. had been under no immediate threat and questioning the legality of the operations because people on the boats are not military combatants and the U.S. and Venezuela are not at war.

(Eric Martin contributed to this report.)