Three suspected narco-terrorists were killed in a US attack on a drug-smuggling ship affiliated with Colombia’s National Liberation Army, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Sunday.
The “deadly kinetic attack” took place in international waters on Friday at the direction of President Donald Trump, Hegseth wrote in a post on X.
“The vessel was known to our intelligence community to be involved in the illicit smuggling of narcotics, was operating along a known narcotics trafficking route and was transporting significant quantities of narcotics,” Hegseth wrote. “There were three male narco-terrorists on board the ship during the attack, which was carried out in international waters.”
“All three terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were injured in this attack,” he added.
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Hegseth also shared an unclassified video showing the moment of the attack.
The ship was affiliated with the Colombian National Liberation Army, known as Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), Hegseth said. (Ministry of War)
The Colombian Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) is a designated terrorist organization. Hegseth compared the Colombian rebel group to the terrorist group Al Qaeda, founded by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Hegseth said the ship was trafficking narcotics. (Ministry of War)
“These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder and terrorism to impose their will, threaten our national security and poison our people,” Hegseth wrote. “The U.S. military will treat these organizations as the terrorists they are; they will be hunted down and killed, just like Al Qaeda.”
Hegseth attends a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, following a meeting of NATO defense ministers at Alliance Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on October 15, 2025. (Reuters/Yves Herman)
Colombian President Gustavo Petro disputed that the ship had ties to ELN, calling it a fishing boat belonging to a “humble family.”
‘The fishing boat from Santa Marta did not belong to the ELN; it belonged to a simple family, lovers of the sea, from which they got their food,” Petro wrote in a post on X. “What do you say to that family? Explain to me why you helped kill a simple fisherman from Santa Marta, the country where Bolívar died and which they say is the heart of the world.”
‘What do you say to the family of the fisherman Alejandro Carranza? He was a humble person,” Petro continued.
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Friday’s strike brings to at least 31 the death toll from the Trump administration’s military campaign against suspected drug smuggling vessels in the region. The operations began last month and are part of Trump’s broader efforts to forcibly dismantle transnational cartels.
On Thursday, the US military carried out an attack on what Trump later called a “very large drug submarine” in the Caribbean, killing two suspected narco-terrorists and capturing two others alive.
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A separate attack killed six suspected smugglers aboard a ship off the coast of Venezuela on Tuesday.
