Four people were killed in the latest US military airstrike against a suspected drug trafficking ship in the Eastern Pacific on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a social media post.
This follows attacks on four suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Eastern Pacific on Monday that killed 14 people, according to Hegseth.
Overall, this is the 14th such attack carried out by the United States since the attacks began on September 2, targeting suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean and killing more than 60 people in total.
The United States carried out another attack on a suspected drug trafficking vessel in the Eastern Pacific, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on October 29, 2025, killing four people.
@SegundaGuerra/X
In announcing the latest attack Wednesday, Hegseth said that, at the direction of President Donald Trump, the Department of Defense “conducted a lethal kinetic attack against another drug trafficking vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization in the Eastern Pacific.”
“Our intelligence knew that this ship, like all others, was involved in smuggling illicit narcotics, transiting a known drug trafficking route and transporting narcotics,” he continued.
Four men suspected “narcoterrorists” aboard the ship died, according to Hegseth, who posted a video of the strike that was labeled “unclassified.”
Hegseth did not say where the ship came from.
Hegseth’s announcement about the latest attack came on the same day that the Trump administration briefed more than a dozen senators about the military campaign off the coast of Venezuela, but only invited Republicans. according to a top Democrat who called the measure “indefensible and dangerous.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington during a visit to U.S. Navy Base Yokosuka in Yokosuka, Japan, Oct. 28, 2025.
Eugenio Hoshiko/AP
Excluding legislators based on their political party is a major departure from protocol. Lawmakers rely on details about military and intelligence operations — many of them classified — to do their job overseeing Pentagon policy and its massive $1 trillion budget.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Excluding Democrats from a briefing on U.S. military strikes and hiding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement. “Decisions about the use of U.S. military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of a political party. For any administration to treat them this way erodes our national security and runs counter to Congress’s constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace.”
ABC News’ Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
