No refuge, only justice: US expands Trump-era narco war with first Pacific strike

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the military conducted its eighth strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel, this time in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people.

The strike marks the first known US military operation in the Pacific since President Donald Trump launched his renewed offensive against narco-trafficking, a campaign that has already seen seven lethal strikes in the Caribbean.

“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organisation,” Hegseth posted on X, sharing a dramatic video of the attack.

The video shows a small boat laden with brown packages gliding across the water before erupting in flames after being hit. US officials said the strike was carried out in international waters and that no American personnel were harmed.

WAR ON CARTELS COMPARED TO WAR ON TERROR

According to Hegseth, the vessel was known by intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling and was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route. The two people aboard were described as narco-terrorists.

In his post, Hegseth compared the war on cartels to America’s war on terror. “Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said, adding “there will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”

Since Trump ordered the military offensive earlier this year, at least 34 people have been killed in strikes targeting suspected narco vessels.

Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and proclaiming the criminal organizations as unlawful combatants, relying on the same legal authority used by President George W Bush’s administration when it declared a war on terrorism, according to the Associated Press.

Most drug overdose deaths in the US are caused by fentanyl, which is mostly brought in by land from Mexico. Venezuela serves as a key transit point for narcotics, but about 75 per cent of Colombia’s cocaine is smuggled through the eastern Pacific Ocean rather than the Caribbean.

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With inputs from agencies