The United States military conducted its eighth operation targeting a suspected narcotics-laden vessel, resulting in the deaths of two individuals in the eastern Pacific, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced. This move signifies a widening of the Trump administration’s efforts to combat drug trafficking emanating from South America.

This recent action, taking place on Tuesday night, diverges from the previous seven US operations that were focused on targets within the Caribbean region.

Via social media, Hegseth confirmed that the latest strike led to two fatalities, raising the cumulative death toll to at least 34 since the series of attacks commenced last month.

This operation represents both an extension of the military’s focus in South American maritime areas and a strategic pivot towards Colombia, a major conduit for cocaine from the world’s top producer.

In his post, Hegseth equates the current crackdown on drug trafficking with the US’s war on terror, initiated after the September 11, 2001, attacks, reflecting a similar intensity and commitment.

“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” Hegseth said, adding “there will be no refuge or forgiveness — only justice.”

US President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the country is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and proclaiming the criminal organisations as unlawful combatants, relying on the same legal authority used by former president George W. Bush’s administration when it declared a war on terrorism.

In a brief video Hegseth posted on Wednesday, a small boat, half-filled with brown packages, is seen moving along the water.

Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless on the water in flames.

The administration has sidestepped prosecuting any of the occupants of the alleged drug-running vessels after returning two survivors of an earlier strike to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

Ecuadorian officials later said they released the man that was returned to their country, saying that they had no evidence he committed a crime in their country.

The US military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since mid this year, raising speculation that Trump could try to topple raising Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

He faces charges of narcoterrorism in the US.

The bulk of American overdose deaths are from fentanyl, which is transported by land from Mexico.

While Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, about 75 per cent of the cocaine produced in Colombia is smuggled through the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.