By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military conducted its eighth strike against an alleged drug vessel, killing two people, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday.
The Tuesday night strike occurred in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The seven previous strikes all targeted vessels in the Caribbean. According to Hegseth in a social media post, the strike killed two people, bringing the death toll from all the strikes to at least 34 people.
In a brief video released by Hegseth, a small boat, half-filled with brown packages, is seen moving along the water. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless on the water in flames.
In his post, Hegseth took the unusual step of equating the alleged drug traffickers to the group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said, adding “there will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”
President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and is relying on the same legal authority used by President George W. Bush’s administration when it declared a war on terrorism after the Sept. 11 attack.
However, the Trump administration has also sidestepped prosecuting any of the occupants of the alleged drug-running vessels after it returned two survivors of an earlier strike to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
Ecuadorian officials later said that they released the man that was returned to their country, saying that they had no evidence he committed a crime in their country.
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