US ‘Secretary of War’ Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday night (US time) that the Department of War had carried out another “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO)” at the behest of US President Donald Trump. This now stands in as the ninth such strike on a vessel allegedly carrying drugs. The incident resulted in three people being killed in the eastern Pacific Ocean, as per Hegseth’s social media post.
A boat strike killing three people in the Pacific made news shortly after a previous similar attack. 2 people were declared dead in the other strike on Tuesday night. “There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike,” Hegseth said in a post he shared hours before the one mentioned above.
2 allegedly drug-carrying vessels attack in the Pacific within hours
In the same post shared on X, Hegseth warned that the strikes will continue amid Trump’s crackdown on drug trafficking in South America. “These are not simply drug runners—these are narco-terrorists bringing death and destruction to our cities,” he wrote. “These DTOs are the “Al Qaeda” of our hemisphere and will not escape justice. We will find them and kill them, until the threat to the American people is extinguished.”
Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out yet another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO). Yet again, the now-deceased terrorists were engaged in narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific.
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) October 23, 2025
The… pic.twitter.com/PEaKmakivD
With the two recent attacks on vessels allegedly carrying drugs, the death toll linked to such strikes has now risen to 37.
Trump, Rubio defend boat attacks
The war secretary’s admissions continue to amplify US President Donald Trump’s clarifications that American in embroiled in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. When recently asked about boat attacks, the MAGA leader backed the decisions, saying that the US had “legal authority” to carry out such strikes. While insisting that they’re allowed to go ahead with them, he also suggested that such attacks could next be carried out on land.
“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” he said in the Oval Office. “We’re totally prepared to do that. And we’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land.”
US State Secretary Marco Rubio also defended the incidents, adding, “If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States.”