U.S. forces conducted a new lethal strike on a drug trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela on Oct. 14, according to President Donald Trump.

“Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility—just off the Coast of Venezuela,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday afternoon.

Trump said the strike, which took place in international waters, resulted in the deaths of six men who were suspected drug traffickers.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” Trump added.

The operation on Oct. 14 was the latest in a series of lethal U.S. military strikes announced by the president and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in recent weeks. On Oct. 3, Hegseth announced what was at least the fourth U.S. strike on what he said was a narcotics trafficking boat in the southern Caribbean since September.

Since Trump took office, the U.S. State Department has designated 13 different Latin American and Caribbean cartels and criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.

These U.S. military strikes in the waters off Venezuela’s coastline also coincide with growing U.S. pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration has accused of backing cartels in his country. Maduro has denied the accusations.

In August, the U.S. Department of Justice doubled the award for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, from $25 million to $50 million. Around the same time, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said U.S. relations with Venezuela had become “a law enforcement matter, not a diplomatic matter.”

By mid-August, the U.S. military had deployed numerous warships to the southern Caribbean, including guided missile destroyers and an amphibious-ready group with a contingent of U.S. Marines.

Maduro said the recent U.S. military force build-up in the Caribbean is a threat and placed his country’s forces on a heightened state of alert in recent months.

Announcing the first U.S. strike on a drug boat on Sept. 2, Trump drew a direct connection between the drug traffickers and Maduro. Trump said the 11 narco-trafficking suspects killed in the strike were members of Tren de Aragua, and were “operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro.”

Two days after the Sept. 2 boat strike, a pair of Venezuelan military aircraft flew over a U.S. warship operating in the Caribbean. The following day, the U.S. military repositioned 10 F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters to Puerto Rico.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration formally notified Congress that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict“ with drug cartels, which the administration referred to as “unlawful combatants.”

This past week, the U.S. Senate took a vote on a war powers resolution to restrain U.S. military operations in the Caribbean. The resolution failed on a vote of 48-51.