Six Killed After US Strikes Boat Off Venezuela In 5th Such Operation

President Trump has announced another military strike against a boat off Venezuela suspected of trafficking drugs on Tuesday, which killed all six people on board.

Trump stated that the vessel was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” but did not name any organization or issue specific evidence to back this, only releasing unclassified video of the strike.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” the US President said on his Truth Social platform.

“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed,” he added.

This marks the fifth known strike on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent months, with the prior four instances having killed 21 people total. A prior strike had been disclosed by the Pentagon in early October.

President Trump at the start of this month formally notified Congress this week that the US was entering a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.

Trump’s rationale for the attacks in his memo to Congress stated that the cartels are “non-state armed groups” whose actions smuggling drugs “constitute an armed attack against the United States”.

In particular the administration has essentially declared war on the Tren de Aragua cartel, and says it is cooperating with the Maduro government, which Caracas has rejected, and so the presence of the cartel’s members in the US is a “predatory incursion” by a foreign nation.

But human rights monitors, and a tiny minority in Congress, have questioned the legality of such deadly military attacks – especially given there has appeared no attempt to warn or intercept the boats.

Newly posted video of the Tuesday strike shows a fast-moving missile enter the frame and utterly destroy the small vessel:

Breaking news:

President Trump announces that another kinetic attack has been carried out, eliminating six male narco-terrorists off the coast of Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/jV2sHZmlud

— GG (@LuillyDRR) October 14, 2025

Back when he was briefed by the DOD on an initial strike, Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said “They have offered no positive identification that the boat was Venezuelan, nor that its crew were members of Tren de Aragua or any other cartel.”

Such pushback hasn’t abated these operations, at a moment of strong Pentagon build-up of assets off Venezuela, but now they’re becoming somewhat routine.