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The US military launched its eighth strike against an alleged drug-carrying vessel, killing two people in the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said, marking an expansion of the Trump administration's campaign against drug trafficking in South America. The attack on Tuesday night was a departure from the seven previous US strikes that had targeted vessels in the Caribbean. Hegseth said on social media that the latest strike killed two people, bringing the death toll to at least 34 from attacks that began last month. READ MORE: Trump's deadly strikes against alleged drug boats raises legal questions The strike marks an expansion of the military's targeting area in South American waters as well as a shift to Colombia, where much of the cocaine from the world's largest producer is smuggled. Hegseth's post also draws a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the US declared after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration's crackdown. "Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people," Hegseth said, adding "there will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice." US President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the country is engaged in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels and proclaiming the criminal organisations as unlawful combatants, relying on the same legal authority used by former president George W. Bush's administration when it declared a war on terrorism. In a brief video Hegseth posted on Wednesday, a small boat, half-filled with brown packages, is seen moving along the water. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless on the water in flames. The administration has sidestepped prosecuting any of the occupants of the alleged drug-running vessels after returning two survivors of an earlier strike to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. READ MORE: PM's plane forced into unscheduled stop on way home from US Ecuadorian officials later said they released the man that was returned to their country, saying that they had no evidence he committed a crime in their country. The US military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since mid this year, raising speculation that Trump could try to topple raising Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He faces charges of narcoterrorism in the US. The bulk of American overdose deaths are from fentanyl, which is transported by land from Mexico. While Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, about 75 per cent of the cocaine produced in Colombia is smuggled through the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean. DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
