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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military launched its ninth attack Wednesday against a ship allegedly carrying drugs, killing three people in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug trafficking in South America, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak to the media at 3 p.m. ET. Watch in the player above.

This followed another strike on Tuesday night, also in the eastern Pacific, that killed two people, Hegseth posted on social media hours earlier. The attacks were a departure from the seven previous US strikes targeting ships in the Caribbean Sea. This brings the death toll to at least 37 in the attacks that began last month.

The strikes represent an expansion of the military’s targeting area as well as a shift to waters off South America where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled. Hegseth’s social media posts also made a direct comparison between the war on terrorism declared by the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the crackdown launched by the Trump administration.

“Just as Al-Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these gangs wage war on our borders and our people,” Hegseth said, adding, “There will be no refuge or forgiveness – only justice.”

Later on Wednesday, he referred to the alleged drug traffickers as “Al-Qaeda in our hemisphere.”

Republican President Donald Trump justified the strikes by asserting that the United States was engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, and considering these criminal organizations as illegal combatants, relying on the same legal authority that the administration of President George W. Bush used in the war on terrorism.

Trump says strikes on the ground could be next

When asked about the recent boat attack, Trump insisted, “We have legal authority. We are allowed to do this.” He added that similar strikes might eventually be carried out on the ground.

“We will hit them hard when they come in,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re fully prepared to do that. And maybe we’ll go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we get to the ground.”

Lawmakers from both political parties have expressed concerns about Trump ordering military operations without obtaining congressional authorization or providing many details.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who appeared alongside Trump, defended such strikes, saying: “If people want to stop seeing drug boats explode, stop sending drugs into the United States.”

Trump said the strikes he orders are meant to save Americans and “the only way you can’t feel bad about that… is to realize that every time you see that happen, you’re saving 25,000 lives.”

Targeting a boat on the cocaine smuggling route

In the first short video posted by Hegseth on Wednesday, a small boat, half filled with brown packages, is seen moving along the water. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless on the water, engulfed in flames.

The second video clip shows another boat moving quickly before being hit by an explosion. A video apparently recorded after the explosion shows bombs floating in the water.

The US military has amassed an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since this summer, raising speculation that Trump might try to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro faces drug-related terrorism charges in the United States

In his posts about the strikes, Trump repeatedly argued that illicit drugs and fentanyl carried by ships could poison Americans.

While the bulk of overdose deaths in the United States are due to fentanyl, the drug is transported by land from Mexico. Venezuela is a major drug transit area, but the eastern Pacific, not the Caribbean, is the main area for cocaine trafficking.

Colombia and Peru, two countries located on the eastern Pacific coast, are the world’s largest cocaine producers. In between is Ecuador, whose world-class ports and countless sea shipping containers filled with bananas have become the ideal way for drug traffickers to transport their products.

The administration avoided prosecuting any of the passengers on the alleged drug smuggling ships after returning two survivors of a previous raid to their home countries in Ecuador and Colombia.

Ecuadorian officials later said they released the returned man because they had no evidence that a crime had been committed in their country.

Questions from Congress as strikes continue

Some Republican lawmakers have asked the White House for more clarification on its legal justifications and details on how the strikes were carried out, while Democrats insist they are violations of US and international law.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was concerned and angry about the lack of information about the strikes.

“Expanding geography simply expands the chaos and recklessness of the US military’s use of it without legal or practical justification,” Blumenthal said.

The way to target trafficking, he said, is to stop boats and interrogate those on board to find the source of the drugs, “not just destroy the smugglers who are potentially at the bottom of the smuggling chain.”

The Republican-controlled Senate recently voted on a Democratic-sponsored war powers resolution, mostly along party lines, that would have required the president to get authorization from Congress before launching further military strikes.

Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said he met Rubio.

“He has carefully considered the legal ramifications and believes we are on solid ground in attacking these drug terrorists,” Kennedy said. “I trust his judgment.”

Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Kevin Freking in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.