American military forces carried out three airstrikes Monday that destroyed four vessels in the eastern Pacific alleged to be transporting drugs bound for the U.S., Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced.

The strikes, which killed 14 and left one survivor, are the latest in a dramatic ramp-up of lethal American attacks on drug trafficking vessels in the waters of the western hemisphere. They also mark the expansion of the U.S. military’s presence in the eastern pacific; most of the previous strikes were on drug boats travelling in the Caribbean Sea.

The Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance towards drug trafficking, dramatically expanding U.S. military presence in SOUTHCOM and designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. “These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X. “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

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