The boat was ’transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific,’ according to U.S. Southern Command.
The Pentagon announced that it had conducted a lethal strike on Dec. 4 on a drug trafficking boat in the Eastern Pacific.
The U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and near Latin America, wrote in a Thursday social media post that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth directed Joint Task Force Southern Spear to conduct a “lethal kinetic strike” on a boat in international waters being operated by suspected narco-terrorists.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific,” U.S. Southern Command wrote, adding that four men aboard the boat died in the strike.
The strike was announced hours after Navy Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine sat down for classified hearings on Capitol Hill regarding a U.S. strike in September that killed two survivors of an initial strike on another vessel.
Bradley told lawmakers that Hegseth did not give a “kill them all” order in the strike, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told reporters on Thursday after leaving one of the classified briefings.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
By Jacob Burg
