International human-rights advocates, legal experts and drug policy reformers are sounding alarms after a U.S. military strike destroyed a small boat off the Venezuelan coast last week, killing those on board. The Trump administration defended the action as part of its expanded war on drugs, but critics describe it as an unprecedented extrajudicial killing carried out without legal justification.

Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, called the strike a dangerous escalation.

“I come at this from a place of real concern about the rule of law,” she said Friday at a video conference with reporters. “We’ve had presidents who have undermined or ignored the rule of law, authorized extrajudicial killings, and taken lives when they shouldn’t have — but they always offered some kind of legal rationale. With the Trump administration, we’re punching clouds. He has taken this step without providing any legal justification whatsoever.”

According to Yager, previous administrations at least framed military actions in terms of congressional authorizations or international humanitarian law, providing something concrete for critics to challenge. “We could disagree with it, but there was something to argue against,” she said. “What this tells me is that this president believes he can kill anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances — and not have to justify it. And that he will be immune from accountability.”

Sarah Harrison, senior analyst at the U.S. Program for the International Crisis Group, was even more blunt.

“The only conclusion that can be drawn is that under all relevant laws, this was an extrajudicial killing,” she said. “This was a murder.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said the U.S. military again targeted a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three aboard the vessel.

“The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the U.S.,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the strike. “These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests.”

Trump said the strike was carried out Monday, two weeks after another military strike on what the Trump administration says was a drug-carrying speedboat from Venezuela that killed 11.

The Trump administration justified the earlier strike as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.

But several senators, Democrats and some Republicans, have indicated their dissatisfaction with the administration’s rationale and questioned the legality of the action. They view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part because the military was used for law enforcement purposes.