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Trump said intelligence indicated the vessel was trafficking drugs and was \"transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.\"

The strike earlier this week also killed three people, Trump said. 

In the past, the U.S. government has relied on the U.S. Coast Guard and law enforcement personnel to board vessels suspected of carrying drugs for inspection.

But earlier this year, Trump insisted that drug cartels should be in the same legal category as foreign terrorist organizations, paving the way for the kind of lethal military force reserved under the law to prevent an imminent kinetic attack against Americans.

Critics of his administration have questioned this legal justification and whether it amounts to a war crime.

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