U.S. Military Kills 6 People in Another Attack on Boat, Trump Says

The United States killed six men aboard a boat in international waters “just off the Coast of Venezuela,” President Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday, asserting without evidence that they had been transporting drugs.

The strike was the fifth known attack by the U.S. military on such boats since Sept. 2. The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known” route for smuggling, Mr. Trump said in his social media post.

He also posted a 33-second aerial surveillance video showing a small boat floating, and then being struck by a missile and exploding. Unlike some previous announcements, the president did not identify the nationality of the people who were killed or name a specific drug cartel or criminal gang with which they were supposedly associated.

Since Mr. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, started the operation last month, a broad range of legal specialists have called the premeditated and summary extrajudicial killings illegal. They noted that the military cannot lawfully target civilians — even criminal suspects — who do not pose a threat in the moment and are not directly participating in hostilities.

The Trump administration has asserted that killing suspected drug smugglers — rather than having the Coast Guard interdict boats and arrest people aboard them if suspicions of drug smuggling proved accurate, as countries like the United States traditionally deal with the problem — are consistent with the laws of war.