The US military struck a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, expanding a controversial campaign against cartels that had been so far limited to the Caribbean Sea.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the strike in a social media post on Wednesday, saying “two narco-terrorists” were killed.

“Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbour anywhere in our hemisphere,” Hegseth said.

US President Donald Trump has pushed for more aggressive military action against Latin American drug cartels.

The lethal nature of the strikes has some critics accusing the US government of conducting extrajudicial killings rather than the standard approach: stopping the boats, confiscating drugs and arresting those on board.

But those strikes had been largely limited to an area off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, whose government the administration says is fuelling the drug trade.