US military strikes alleged drug boat in Caribbean, killing 4 ‘narco-terrorists’

U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) on Saturday announced the latest strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat traveling through the Caribbean, killing four.

Southcom stated on the social platform X that under its direction, the Joint Force Western Hemisphere “executed a lethal, kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean.”

“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking,” the post reads, alleging that the four people killed were “narco-terrorists.”

The strike is the latest announced in almost a month, with consecutive strikes on two boats in the Caribbean killing a total of six people. This latest attack was the 69th launched against alleged drug traffickers sailing between the Americas.

These strikes in the Caribbean have, over the last year, prompted lawmakers to question the intelligence behind them, raising concerns that alleged war crimes were committed in one of the earliest attacks in which survivors were killed. Navy Adm. Frank Bradley denied that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth passed down an order to “kill everybody” in the September 2025 strike.

Leaders in Colombia and Venezuela have also pushed back on the claims that these boats have trafficked drugs, saying that those aboard were not gang members involved in the transnational sale of narcotics.

The Trump administration has designated several gangs — including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Mexican cartel known as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — as terrorist organizations.

Strikes on boats accused of drug trafficking were notable in the lead-up to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

House Democrats introduced two bills in December to curtail the strikes and the administration’s “hostilities within or against Venezuela” before Maduro’s capture and subsequent indictment in New York.