WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday he ordered a fourth strike on a small boat in the waters off Venezuela, according to a social media post.

In his post, Hegseth said that “our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route.”

The strike comes less than a day after it was revealed that President Donald Trump declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and declared that the United States is now in an “armed conflict” with them in a memo obtained by The Associated Press.