WASHINGTON — For the second time in two days, the Trump administration launched deadly strikes on a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, expanding its campaign beyond the Caribbean Sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said late Wednesday.

The strikes this week were the eighth and ninth known boat attacks that U.S. Special Operations forces have conducted since the operation began in early September, and brought the officially acknowledged death toll to 37.

Hegseth did not provide geographic details beyond saying that the attacks had taken place in the eastern Pacific, in international waters. All of the previous seven attacks took place in the Caribbean. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the first strike in the e

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