{"id":262813,"date":"2025-11-05T07:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T07:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262813\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T07:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T07:10:07","slug":"hegseth-announces-16th-deadly-strike-on-an-alleged-drug-boat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262813\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth announces 16th deadly strike on an alleged drug boat"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yet another deadly strike on a boat<\/a> accused of ferrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, coming the same day an aircraft carrier began heading to the region<\/a> in a new expansion of military firepower.<\/p>\n

The attack Tuesday killed two people aboard the vessel, Hegseth said, bringing the death toll<\/a> from the Trump administration\u2019s campaign in South American waters up to at least 66 people in at least 16 strikes.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by saying the United States is in \u201carmed conflict\u201d with drug cartels<\/a> and claiming the boats are operated by foreign terror organizations<\/a>. The administration has not provided evidence or more details.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will find and terminate EVERY vessel with the intention of trafficking drugs to America to poison our citizens,\u201d Hegseth posted while on a trip to Asia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers from both parties have pressed the Trump administration for more information on who is being targeted<\/a> and the legal justification for the strikes given that Congress has not authorized military action. United Nations human rights chief Volker T\u00fcrk last week called for the U.S. to halt the attacks<\/a> and \u201cprevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest strike comes as the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier<\/a> has left the Mediterranean Sea on its way to the Caribbean after Hegseth ordered it to the region more than a week ago. It will join an already robust buildup of American planes, ships and thousands of troops in Latin America.<\/p>\n

A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ship movements, confirmed that the Ford and the destroyer USS Bainbridge crossed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Ford originally deployed with five destroyers, but it\u2019s not clear if all of them will go to the Caribbean. Two of the other destroyers in the Ford\u2019s strike group, the USS Winston Churchill and the USS Mahan, are in the Mediterranean now, with the Mahan in port at Rota, Spain.<\/p>\n

The other two destroyers, the USS Forrest Sherman and the USS Mitchener, are in the Red Sea, the official said.<\/p>\n

With the strikes and military assets in the region expanding, Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism<\/a> in the United States, has said the U.S. government is \u201cfabricating\u201d a war<\/a> against him.<\/p>\n

During a interview that aired Sunday on CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d Trump was asked if the U.S. was going to war with Venezuela. He responded: \u201cI doubt it. I don\u2019t think so. But they\u2019ve been treating us very badly, not only on drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norah O\u2019Donnell, in the interview conducted Friday, also asked Trump if Maduro\u2019s days were numbered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say yeah. I think so, yeah,\u201d the president said. Trump would not say whether or not he would order land strikes in Venezuela<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the latest strike, a video Hegseth posted to social media has a gray box obscuring a boat that appears in the water before it\u2019s blown up. The footage then cuts to the vessel engulfed by flames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yet another deadly strike on a boat accused of ferrying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,20917,361,1376,75,2841,121633,12514,81986,118169,21787,28306,714,30499,772,8116,121634,8615],"class_list":["post-262813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-caribbean","tag-celebrities","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-gerald-ford","tag-mediterranean-sea","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-norah-odonnell","tag-pacific-ocean","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-politics","tag-terrorism","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-volker-trk","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}