The U.S. military launched a strike against a vessel in the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday. Hegseth says the vessel was carrying drugs.

The attack Tuesday night was a departure from the seven previous U.S. strikes that had targeted vessels in the Caribbean. The U.S. military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since this summer.

Hegseth said on social media that the latest strike killed two people, bringing the death toll to at least 34 from attacks that began last month.

The strike represents an expansion of the military's targeting area as well as a shift to the waters off South America where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.

Colombia and Peru, countries with coastlines on the eastern Pacific, are the world’s top cocaine producers. Wedged between them is Ecuador, whose world-class ports and myriad maritime shipping containers filled with bananas have become the perfect vehicle for drug traffickers to move their product.

Republican President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and proclaiming the criminal organizations unlawful combatants, relying on the same legal authority used by President George W. Bush's administration when it declared a war on terrorism.