WASHINGTON, Oct 4, (AP): US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that he ordered another strike on a small boat he accused of carrying drugs in the waters off Venezuela, expanding what the Trump administration has declared is an "armed conflict” with cartels. In a post on social media, Hegseth asserted that the "vessel was trafficking narcotics" and those aboard were "narco-terrorists.”

He said the strike killed four men but offered no details on who they were or what group they belonged to, following the US designation of several Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. President Donald Trump said in his own social media post that the boat was "loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE” and implied it was "entering American Territory” while off the coast of Venezuela.

It is the fourth deadly strike in the Caribbean and the latest since revelations that Trump told lawmakers he was treating drug traffickers as unlawful combatants and military force was required to combat them. That assertion of presidential war powers sets the stage for expanded action and raises questions about how far the administration will go without sign-off from Congress.

"Blowing them up without knowing who’s on the boat is a terrible policy, and it should end,” said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a consistent and harsh critic of the US strikes. The Trump administration laid out its justification for the strikes in a memo obtained by The Associated Press this week. "The President determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” according to the memo sent to Congress.

Trump directed the Pentagon to "conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict,” the document says. Sen. Jim Risch, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the president had the authority to go after the cartels without further authorization from Congress under "his general powers under the Constitution as the commander in chief.”

"What could be a bigger defense of this country than keeping out this poison that’s killing thousands of Americans every year?” Risch said Friday. Paul said only Congress has the authority to declare war and characterized the memo as "a way to pretend like” the administration is notifying lawmakers with a justification for the strikes.