U.S. Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth an­nounced that the Unit­ed States car­ried out a lethal strike on a ves­sel op­er­at­ed by a des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tion in the East­ern Pa­cif­ic.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­re­tary Hegseth, the ac­tion was di­rect­ed by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. The ves­sel was re­port­ed­ly in­volved in nar­cotics smug­gling and was trav­el­ing along a known traf­fick­ing route. In­tel­li­gence sources in­di­cat­ed that the ves­sel was car­ry­ing il­le­gal drugs at the time of the op­er­a­tion.

The strike, de­scribed as ki­net­ic, was con­duct­ed in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters.

Two in­di­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as nar­co-ter­ror­ists were killed in the op­er­a­tion. Hegseth stat­ed that no U.S. per­son­nel were in­jured dur­ing the mis­sion.

In a state­ment on Face­book, Sec­re­tary Hegseth said that or­ga­ni­za­tions in­volved in the nar­cotics trade pose a threat to U.S. bor­ders and cit­i­zens. He com­pared their ac­tiv­i­ties to those of Al Qae­da, not­ing that both seek to harm the Unit­ed States.

Sec­re­tary Hegseth said the De­part­ment of War will con­tin­ue to tar­get net­works en­gaged in traf­fick­ing and ter­ror­ism. He stat­ed that there will be no refuge for in­di­vid­u­als or groups at­tempt­ing to bring il­le­gal sub­stances in­to the coun­try.

The De­part­ment of War did not dis­close the spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tion of the strike or the iden­ti­ty of the group op­er­at­ing the ves­sel.

The state­ment con­clud­ed with Sec­re­tary Hegseth af­firm­ing that such op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue un­der the di­rec­tion of the Pres­i­dent.