U.S. hit second boat said to be carrying drugs from Venezuela: Trump

President Donald Trump said the U.S. struck a second vessel ferrying drugs from Venezuela, showing his determination to proceed with an aggressive strategy that’s ratcheted up tensions with the country and prompted questions about the legality of targeting non-combatants.

U.S. forces “conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists” in the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility, Trump wrote in a social media post. “The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics.”

The post included a link to a video that showed a vessel rolling in the waves in unidentified waters. After several seconds it is consumed by a massive fireball. Trump said the attack “resulted in 3 male terrorists killed in action.” He told reporters in the White House later on Monday that the U.S. is ready to strike drug cartels on land as well as at sea.

Trump ordered the strike about two weeks after the U.S. military said it killed 11 people in an attack on a boat that was also allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. That move spiked tension with Venezuela and prompted objections from some of the Latin American country’s neighbors. There was also criticism at home from legal experts and some members of Congress, who argued that the U.S. had been under no immediate threat and the strike may not have been legal because the people on the boat were not military combatants and the U.S. and Venezuela aren’t at war.

The latest strike is almost certain to raise similar questions. In the video that Trump posted to social media on Monday, the vessel appears not to be moving. There’s also no indication of where it was headed. Venezuelan government officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the initial first strike was widely seen as a “heinous crime” and accused the U.S. of trying to push his country into war. The U.S. has deployed several naval vessels and about 4,000 sailors and Marines to the waters off Venezuela while also moving several F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico.

“The scale of the deployment and the ambitions of the administration suggest it wants to go big, maybe by causing internal regime fracture,” said Risa Grais-Targow, who leads coverage of Venezuela for the Eurasia Group. “But there seems to be a bit of a mismatch between the targets and the assets they are deploying.”

Trump administration officials have defended the strategy, with the president referring to the earlier strike as military action. In a letter to Congress, he argued it was “consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests.”

“What needs to start happening is some of these boats need to get blown up,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Jerusalem on Monday. “We can’t live in a world where all of a sudden they do a U-turn and so we can’t touch them anymore.”

In a subsequent social-media post on Monday, Trump said drug cartels had wrought “DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES” on Americans, and the U.S. was “hunting” anyone transporting deadly narcotics. Trump said both the earlier strike and Monday’s took place in international waters.