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WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that he ordered another strike on a small boat he accused of carrying drugs in the waters off Venezuela, expanding what the Trump administration has declared is an “armed conflict” with cartels.
In a post on social media, Hegseth asserted that the “vessel was trafficking narcotics” and those aboard were “narco-terrorists.” He said the strike killed four men but offered no details on who they were or what group they belonged to, following the US designation of several Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
President Donald Trump said in his own social media post that the boat was “loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE” and implied it was “entering American Territory” while off the coast of Venezuela.
It is the fourth deadly strike in the Caribbean and the latest since revelations that Trump told lawmakers he was treating drug traffickers as unlawful combatants and military force was required to combat them. That assertion of presidential war powers sets the stage for expanded action and raises questions about how far the administration will go without sign-off from Congress.
“Blowing them up without knowing who’s on the boat is a terrible policy, and it should end,” said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a consistent and harsh critic of the US strikes.
The Trump administration laid out its justification for the strikes in a memo obtained by The Associated Press this week.
“The President determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” according to the memo sent to Congress. Trump directed the Pentagon to “conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict,” the document says.
Sen. Jim Risch, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the president had the authority to go after the cartels without further authorization from Congress under “his general powers under the Constitution as the commander in chief.”
“What could be a bigger defense of this country than keeping out this poison that’s killing thousands of Americans every year?” Risch said Friday.
Paul said only Congress has the authority to declare war and characterized the memo as “a way to pretend like” the administration is notifying lawmakers with a justification for the strikes.
“If they want to declare war, come to Congress and say they want to declare war,” he told the AP. “But you can’t just say it yourself and say, Oh, well, we sent them a note and now we’re at war with unnamed people who we won’t even identify before we kill.”
Hours after Hegseth announced the latest strike, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said the “warlike aggression” by the US affects the greater Caribbean, not just Venezuela.
“We see it and feel it, as they murder our countries’ citizens in summary extrajudicial executions,” she said during a conference in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, focused on colonialism in the West.
Meanwhile, President Nicolás Maduro did not explicitly mention the strikes, but he told conference attendees that his country is ready to defend itself.
“Venezuela has the right to peace, to sovereignty, to existence, and no empire in this world can take it away,” he said. “And if it is necessary to move from an unarmed struggle to an armed struggle, this people will do so. … Colonialism no more.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a leftist leader who has clashed with the Trump administration, accused the US of committing “murder” and urged the victims’ families to “join forces.”
“There are no narco-terrorists on the boats,” he posted on X after the strike was announced. “Drug traffickers live in the US, Europe and Dubai. On that boat are poor Caribbean youth.”
Video of Friday’s strike posted online showed a small boat moving in open water when it suddenly explodes, with water splashing all around it. As the smoke from the explosion clears, the boat is visible, consumed with flames, floating motionless on the water.
With it, at least three of the strikes have now been carried out on vessels that US officials said had originated from Venezuela. The strikes followed a buildup of US maritime forces in the Caribbean unlike any seen in recent times.
The Navy’s presence in the region — eight warships with over 5,000 sailors and Marines — has been pretty stable for weeks, according to two defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.
In a post about the first strike last month, Trump claimed the vessel was carrying members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Posts about all the subsequent strikes, including Friday’s, have not provided any details about what organizations have been targeted. The four strikes have killed 21 people, the administration says.
Pentagon officials who briefed senators on the strikes this week could not provide a list of the designated terrorist organizations at the center of the conflict.
Officials in the Pentagon, when asked for more details about the strike, referred The Associated Press back to Hegseth’s post.

MUNICH: Authorities shut down Munich Airport late Friday, the second closure in less than 24 hours after more suspected drone sightings, the airport said in a statement.
The closures are the latest after mysterious drone overflights in the airspace of European Union member countries.
The airport suspended flight operations Friday night until further notice “as a precautionary measure due to unconfirmed sightings,” the statement said.
Germany’s air traffic control previously restricted flights at the airport shortly after 10 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Thursday and then halted them altogether, the airport said in a previous statement. Seventeen flights were unable to take off, affecting almost 3,000 passengers, while 15 arriving flights were diverted to three other airports in Germany and one in Vienna, Austria.
Flights in and out of the airport then resumed at 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Friday, said Stefan Bayer, a spokesperson for Germany’s federal police at Munich airport.
Authorities were not immediately able to provide any information about who was responsible for the overflights.
The latest in a series of drone incidents in Europe
The incident was the latest in a series of incidents of mysterious drone sightings over airports as well as other critical infrastructure sites in several European Union member countries. Drones also were spotted overnight in Belgium above a military base.
A drone incident in Oslo, the capital of Norway, which is a NATO member but not part of the EU, also affected flights there late last month.
It wasn’t immediately clear who has been behind the flyovers. European authorities have expressed concerns that they’re being carried out by Russia, though some experts have noted that anybody with drones could be behind them. Russian authorities have rejected claims of involvement, including in recent drone incidents in Denmark.
Passengers stranded in Munich
The Munich Airport said in a statement early Friday that there had been “several drone sightings,” without elaborating. In a later statement, it clarified that “detection and defense against drones” falls to federal and state police.
Federal police are investigating the reported drone sightings, German news agency dpa reported Friday.
Bayer, the police spokesman, said early Friday it wasn’t immediately clear how many drones might have been involved. He said police, airline employees and “regular people around the airport” were among witnesses who reported the drone sightings.
After the closure of the runways early Friday, federal police deployed helicopters and other means to try to track down the drones, but no signs of them could be found, Bayer said.
Hundreds of stranded passengers spent the night in cots set up in terminals or were taken to hotels, and blankets, drinks and snacks were distributed to them, the German news agency dpa reported.
Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s interior minister said he and some European counterparts would discuss the drone incursions, and a “drone detection and defense plan” at a meeting this weekend in Munich.
“We are in a race between drone threat and drone defense. We want to and must win this race,” he said in the western city of Saarbrücken, where he joined German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron at a ceremony to mark the 35th anniversary of Germany’s reunification.
Drones were spotted overnight in Belgium
In Belgium, several drones were spotted overnight Thursday into Friday above a military base near the German border, Defense Minister Theo Francken told Le Soir newspaper.
The minister did not confirm how many drones were flying in the vicinity of the Elsenborn military base — which serves mainly as an army training facility with a firing range – just after midnight. Belgian public broadcaster VRT said that 15 drones were spotted near the base, which is roughly 600 kilometers (about 375 miles) from Munich.
Francken underlined that the nature of the flights was “suspicious and unknown,” Le Soir said. A defense ministry investigation is ongoing.
‘Anybody’ could be behind the flyovers
Hans-Christian Mathiesen, vice president of defense programs at Sky-Watch, a Danish maker of a fixed-wing combat drone that is being used in Ukraine, said “it could be anybody” who could carry out a drone flyover like the one at Munich airport.
“If you have a drone, you can always fly it into restricted airspace and disrupt activity. So everything from boys not thinking about what they’re doing — just fooling around — to someone that is doing it with a purpose: Criminal organizations, state actors, you name it,” said Mathiesen, whose company is involved in the fast-evolving drone ecosystem.
A state actor could disrupt activities and examine responses “with a minimal level of effort,” he said.
Officials in Russia and close ally Belarus acknowledged last month that some drones used as part of Russia’s war in Ukraine had entered the territory of EU and NATO member Poland, prompting a scramble by Polish and NATO allies in which fighter jets were deployed to shoot them down.
The drone overflights were a major focus of a summit of EU and European leaders in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week. Authorities have vowed to step up measures to minimize and thwart the threat posed by drones.
A Russian tanker is back at sea
Separately, a Russia-linked oil tanker that authorities in France detained — which had been suspected of involvement in the drone incursions over Denmark — was back at sea on Friday. The ship-tracking website Marine Traffic showed the ship leaving the French Atlantic coast where it was detained and apparently bound for the Suez Canal.
A thorough search by French Navy commandos that boarded the ship found no drones, no drone-launching equipment and no evidence that drones had taken off from the vessel, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.
The tanker’s name has changed several times and it’s now known as “Pushpa” or “Boracay.” Its route from a Russian oil terminal into the Atlantic took it past the coast of Denmark.