(The Hill) — The U.S. military on Wednesday killed four alleged “narco-terrorists” during a boat strike in the Pacific Ocean.
The attack follows a series of strikes launched this year, bringing the total death toll to 99.
“On Dec. 17, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization in international waters,” the Southern Command wrote in a post on X.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. A total of four male narco-terrorists were killed, and no U.S. military forces were harmed,” the post continued.
The boat strikes have prompted pushback from Democrats and some law-of-war experts who have argued the strikes are illegal under international law.
Lawmakers have scrutinized the Sept. 2 attack against an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean, where the U.S. military killed two survivors in a so-called double-tap strike. The first two strikes killed 11 people on board, while the third and fourth strikes sank the boat.
However, on Wednesday, Republicans in the House shot down a pair of Democratic-led resolutions designed to curtail Trump’s strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the administration’s “hostilities within or against Venezuela.”
“I think it’s immoral — not just a strategic failure, but a moral failure, that we have a president beating the drums of war with[out] so much as a vote from the House of Representatives,” House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who led one of the resolutions said on the House floor.
“This is not ‘America First.’”