United States Southern Command on Monday announced that Joint Task Force Southern Spear took out three narcotrafficking vessels in the Eastern Pacific.
A total of eight “narco-terrorists” were killed in the strikes. “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US SOUTHCOM said.
Video from the strikes shows massive explosions on each boat, turning them into burning piles of rubble.
US Southern Command said in a statement on X,
On Dec. 15, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking. A total of eight male narco-terrorists were killed during these actions—three in the first vessel, two in the second and three in the third.
Trump signed an executive order earlier on Monday to designate fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) and empower his administration to take on the “concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries.”
This will likely be used to justify the defense of America against drug cartels further, as the order directs the Secretary of War and Secretary of Homeland Security to “update all directives regarding the Armed Forces’ response to chemical incidents in the homeland to include the threat of illicit fentanyl.”