(Reuters) -U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday that the U.S. military conducted a lethal strike on a vessel operated by a drug trafficking organization in the Caribbean, killing three men aboard.

The operation, directed by President Donald Trump and carried out in international waters, targeted a vessel known to be carrying narcotics along a smuggling route, with no U.S. forces harmed, Hegseth said in an X post.

(Reporting by Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Jamie Freed)