Trump Murder Spree Continues as Hegseth Says 14 Killed in 3 New Boat Bombings

Fourteen more people were killed and one survived three new US bombings of what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday claimed—again without evidence—were four boats transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

"Eight male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessels during the first strike. Four male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the second strike. Three male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the third strike," Hegseth said of the Monday attacks, which presumably occurred off the west coast of Mexico.

"A total of 14 narco-terrorists were killed during the three strikes, with one survivor," he continued. "All strikes were in international waters with no US forces harmed."

Hegseth said that US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) "immediately initiated search and rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue."

He added that the Department of Defense "has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them."

US forces have carried out more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September, killing at least 57 people, according to Trump administration figures.

Earlier this month, a bipartisan US Senate war powers resolution aimed at reining in President Donald Trump's ability to extrajudicially execute alleged drug traffickers in or near Venezuela failed to pass.

The latest boat bombings came amid the Trump administration's mounting provocations against Venezuela. In addition to his earlier deployment of an armada of US warships and thousands of troops to the southern Caribbean and ongoing military exercises with neighboring Trinidad and Tobago, the Pentagon said last week that the president ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group off the coast of the oil-rich South American nation—a longtime target of US meddling.

"Somehow, the United States of America has found a way to combine two of its greatest foreign policy failures—the Iraq War and the War on Drugs—into a single regime change narrative... and sell it again to the mainstream media. Incredible," Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler said Tuesday in response to US saber-rattling against Venezuela.

Venezuela said Sunday that it had "captured a mercenary group" aligned with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and had determined "that a false-flag attack is underway from waters bordering Trinidad and Tobago, or from Trinidad or Venezuelan territory itself."

The claim comes less than two weeks after Trump publicly acknowledged his authorization of covert CIA action against Venezuela.

Latin American leaders, human rights defenders, and others have condemned the US boat strikes—which Venezuelan and Colombian officials, as well as victims' relatives, say have killed fishers—as extrajudicial murders and war crimes.

The 93-year-old great-uncle of Chad Joseph, a 26-year-old Trinidadian and Tobagonian killed along with compatriot Rishi Samaroo in an October 14 US strike, called the attack "perfect murder."

“There is nothing they could prove that they are coming across our waters with drugs,” he said earlier this month. “How could Trump prove the boat was bringing narcotics?”