US boat strikes kill 4 more in eastern Pacific as Trump escalates pressure on Venezuela

The US military says it has carried out another fatal strike in international waters, killing four more people in the eastern Pacific, as Washington intensifies a controversial military campaign against Venezuela.

In a post on X on Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that American forces conducted yet another “lethal kinetic strike” on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, resulting in the deaths of four men. He claimed that the boat was trafficking drugs and that it belonged to the so-called Designated Terrorist Organizations.

“Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. 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 US military forces were harmed,” he said.

The announcement came one day after US President Donald Trump declared a blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela. In his statement, he once again accused Caracas of using oil revenues to finance drug trafficking and other criminal activity, while pledging to further escalate the US military buildup in the region.

Trump has so far defended the lethal attacks as a necessary escalation to what he describes as curbing drug flows into the US, claiming Washington is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.

However, US lawmakers are increasingly questioning the campaign, which has reportedly killed at least 99 people in more than two dozen known strikes since September 2, most of them off the coast of Venezuela, marking a sharp intensification of lethal operations far from US territory.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that US forces had also struck three boats accused of drug trafficking in the Pacific, killing eight people.

That toll includes a widely criticized follow-up strike that killed two survivors who were clinging to wreckage after an initial attack, intensifying concerns over civilian casualties and rules of engagement.

Hegseth has defied growing demands for the release of video footage of a September 2 vessel attack, as the US administration continues to portray the campaign as a success that has stopped drugs from reaching US soil, while claiming that it remains within the bounds of lawful warfare.

However, Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, appeared to undercut that justification in a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday, indicating the campaign is also part of a broader effort to topple Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro says US plan to turn Venezuela into its colony ‘will simply never happen’

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says the United States can “never” turn the Latin American country into its “colony.”

After US forces seized a sanctioned Venezuelan oil tanker last week, Maduro said Washington’s real objective is "regime change", not drug control. Meanwhile, the US has assembled its largest regional military presence in decades, expanded deadly operations in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and signaled that land attacks may follow, though without specifying where or when.

“It is simply a warmongering and colonialist pretense, and we have said so many times, and now everyone sees the truth. The truth has been revealed,” Maduro said on Wednesday.

Besides military threats, Washington has also imposed sanctions on Caracas. In a recent move, the Trump administration announced financial bans on three of Maduro’s nephews and six oil tankers and shipping firms.

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