President Donald Trump announced Friday that he ordered another strike against a vessel in international waters in the Caribbean that was “trafficking in illicit narcotics.”

“Following my orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike against a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization that is engaging in narcotics trafficking in the US "US Southern Command," Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Trump claimed that three suspected drug traffickers were killed during the military attack and said that "intelligence" confirmed the vessel was smuggling illicit narcotics along a known route in an attempt to reach the United States.

With this attack, the United States has sunk three vessels attributed to drug trafficking in the southern Caribbean near the Venezuelan coast since August, when they increased their military presence in international waters, justifying the need to "combat drug trafficking."

As in the previous attacks, Trump announced the destruction of the vessel with a video without audio showing a blue-toned boat moving and then exploding after being hit by a projectile.

According to information provided by Trump, the Southern Command has destroyed three vessels attributed to drug trafficking and eliminated 17 alleged criminals, whose identity is unknown, nor are there details of the quantities of drugs they supposedly transported.

This same Friday, the Minister of Defense of Venezuela, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, reported that the Venezuelan army carried out a “successful” military maneuver on the island of La Orchila, in Venezuelan waters of the Caribbean Sea, in the face of the US deployment in the region that has caused tensions and that the president, Nicolas Maduro, has described as “a threat”.

Maduro insists that the US mobilization is a plan to force a “regime change” and impose in his nation a “puppet government” that satisfies Washington's interests.

However, President Trump denied Thursday that he had held talks with members of his administration to plan “regime change” in Caracas.In the past, the US government has used the Coast Guard and law enforcement to board vessels suspected of carrying drugs for inspection purposes. But earlier this year, Trump insisted that drug cartels should be placed in the same legal category as foreign terrorist organizations, paving the way for the kind of lethal military force the law reserves to prevent an imminent kinetic attack against Americans.