Washington DC - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the latest deadly strike on a boat sailing in international waters in the Eastern Pacific, the US military announced Monday.

"Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) posted on X, along with footage of the attack.

"Two male narco-terrorists were killed," it claimed, providing no evidence that the victims were ferrying drugs.

Since September, the US has killed over 100 people in dozens of operations presented as tackling drug-trafficking.

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UN human rights experts have said the operations violate international law, describing the killings as unlawful extrajudicial killings and clear breaches of human rights.

On Monday, President Donald Trump also confirmed a military attack on a facility in Venezuela where, he said, "they load the boats up with drugs."

This marked the first public admission of a land attack on the Latin American country that Trump has been threatening with war for months.

On top of the repeated sinking of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, the Republican has also deployed troops and the world's largest aircraft carrier to the region, seized oil tankers, and declared a partial blockade slammed as an illegal armed aggression by UN experts.