On September 19th, 2025, the United States carried out what United States President Donald Trump described as a “lethal kinetic strike” on a vessel in international waters. According to Trump’s official statement on Truth Social, the strike killed three male individuals on board, whom he referred to as “narco-terrorists” involved in trafficking illicit drugs toward the United States along a “known narcotrafficking passage”. Official US sources later confirmed that those killed had come from Colombia.

Official government sources from the Dominican Republic announced that they had interdicted the same boat hit by the United States 80 nautical miles south of Beata Island, Pedernales province of the Dominican Republic.

In the video published by Trump on Truth Social, a small boat can be seen traveling through the water in two different videos placed side by side. The boat then explodes into flames and the video then shows the boat from different angles, and at one point the boat reignites, indicating there may have been an additional strike. The video and exact statement originally published by Trump were later republished on the official “U.S. Department of War” social media account.

The Dominican Republic announced the day after the strike that “In a joint interdiction operation, agents from the National Drug Control Directorate (DNCD) and the Dominican Navy (ARD), following a U.S. air strike against a narco-terrorist speedboat carrying approximately 1,000 kilograms of suspected cocaine, seized 377 packages of the substance.” The statement referred to the boat as a speedboat and said that the boat “exploded” and was “destroyed” after the strike.

A few days later, on September 23rd, Colombia’s president @petrogustavo posted on Twitter/X that “If the boat was sunk in the Dominican Republic, then it is possible that they were Colombians. This means that officials from the US and the Dominican Republic would be guilty of the murder of Colombian citizens.” The president then encourages the family members of anyone missing to report this to the authorities, adding “There is no law in any legal system that allows firing missiles at boats with unarmed youths at sea.”

This was later confirmed by CNN, who reported on October 15th that according to two people briefed by the Pentagon on the strikes, the boat which was targeted on September 19th had left Colombia and “was suspected of carrying Colombians affiliated with Colombian terrorist organizations.” However, the source also noted that the Pentagon had not identified the individual identities of each person on the boat before the strike. When asked about this, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly reiterated that every strike taken has “been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores.”

There was no independent verification from local sources of the identities of those killed. However, a post from @eduardomenoni referred to the boat as a “Cartel of the Suns [Cartel de los Soles] boat” while @ObservadBinario also mentioned “CdS” referring to it as “Havana cartel [cartel de La Habana].”

Methodological note about classification of those killed in this incident

In documenting this incident, Airwars is following the guidance outlined by independent International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law experts, whereby those on the vessels are understood to be civilians, given that the legal framework in which the strikes are being conducted remains in question.

Airwars has therefore included a civilian casualty count of three deaths.