US De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth on Thurs­day an­nounced an­oth­er dead­ly US strike on a boat he said was traf­fick­ing nar­cotics in the Caribbean Sea.

The at­tack on Thurs­day killed three peo­ple, Hegseth said, bring­ing the death count from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s cam­paign in South Amer­i­can wa­ters up to 69 in at least 17 strikes.

Hegseth post­ed a 20-sec­ond video of the strike on so­cial me­dia and wrote, “As we’ve said be­fore, ves­sel strikes on nar­co-ter­ror­ists will con­tin­ue un­til their … poi­son­ing of the Amer­i­can peo­ple stops.”

He claimed the ves­sel was “op­er­at­ed by a Des­ig­nat­ed Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has jus­ti­fied the strikes by say­ing the Unit­ed States is in “armed con­flict” with drug car­tels and claim­ing the boats are op­er­at­ed by for­eign ter­ror or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Hegseth and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio re­port­ed­ly briefed a small group of con­gres­sion­al lead­ers on Wednes­day on the grow­ing mil­i­tary cam­paign, pro­vid­ing one of the first high-lev­el glimpses in­to the le­gal ra­tio­nale and strat­e­gy be­hind the strikes.

Venezue­lan pub­li­ca­tion El Na­cional quot­ed a re­port from the As­so­ci­at­ed Press that the faces of the vic­tims are start­ing to come to light. It said a fish­er­man with a pre­car­i­ous in­come, a for­mer mil­i­tary cadet, a re­peat of­fend­er, and a bus dri­ver who lost his job are among the first Venezue­lans iden­ti­fied af­ter the US at­tacks in the Caribbean.

The strikes start­ed on Sep­tem­ber 2.

El Na­cional said AP’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion was able to con­firm the iden­ti­ties of four of the vic­tims and gath­er de­tails about five oth­ers, of­fer­ing a clear­er por­trait of those who lost their lives in those mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions.

In coastal com­mu­ni­ties in north­east­ern Venezuela, where fish­ing no longer guar­an­tees liveli­hoods, sev­er­al res­i­dents re­port­ed­ly told the AP that many of the de­ceased agreed to work as crew mem­bers of boats used for smug­gling. Some were pet­ty crim­i­nals; oth­ers, work­ers who were look­ing for quick in­come due to the lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties.

And Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López said mil­i­tary en­roll­ment in­creased 53 per cent this year in re­sponse to the threat from the Unit­ed States, as he de­scribed the coun­try’s naval de­ploy­ment in the Caribbean Sea.

In an event broad­cast by the state chan­nel Vene­zolana de Tele­visión (VTV), the of­fi­cial said that, in the face of the “cer­tain, in­tim­i­dat­ing, vul­gar and mil­i­tary threat,” the en­roll­ment of the Bo­li­var­i­an Mil­i­tary Uni­ver­si­ty in­creased by 53 per cent.

Mean­while, re­ports yes­ter­day sur­faced that Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro may be will­ing to leave pow­er if the Unit­ed States guar­an­tees him amnesty, with­draw­al of re­wards, and safe ex­ile, as re­vealed on Thurs­day by US me­dia out­let The At­lantic.

The re­port, based on sources close to Maduro’s gov­ern­ment and Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, not­ed that the of­fer is part of in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions in Wash­ing­ton, amid an in­crease in US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in the Caribbean.

“If there is enough pres­sure and enough in­cen­tives are of­fered, every­thing is on the ta­ble with Maduro,” said a per­son in the re­port.

The At­lantic ar­ti­cle as­sured that Trump is si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly eval­u­at­ing two routes: a diplo­mat­ic so­lu­tion ne­go­ti­at­ed by his en­voy Richard Grenell and a mil­i­tary pres­sure cam­paign, backed by his Sec­re­tary of State and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vi­sor, Mar­co Ru­bio.