WASHINGTON -- The US military on Wednesday struck one more suspected drug-trafficking vessel in international waters in the eastern Pacific, killing all three people aboard, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday night, the local time.

"Today ... the Department of War carried out yet another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO). Yet again, the now-deceased terrorists were engaged in narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific," he wrote on social media platform X.

Hegseth again accused the vessel of carrying narcotics, saying it was traveling along a known narco-trafficking transit route, but offering no evidence or group name.

"These strikes will continue, day after day. These are not simply drug runners -- these are narco-terrorists bringing death and destruction to our cities ... We will find them and kill them, until the threat to the American people is extinguished," he said.

With the same accusation, Hegseth said earlier on the same day that the US military sank its eighth alleged drug-trafficking vessel in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday, killing two people aboard.

Relations between the US and Colombia have worsened recently. Earlier this month, Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused US President Donald Trump's administration of "murder" for killing drug suspects at sea. Trump responded by cutting US aid to Colombia while threatening to impose new tariffs on the South American country. 

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"The attack on another boat in the Pacific, we don't know if it's Ecuadorean or Colombian, left some dead," Petro wrote on X. "It is still murder. Whether in the Caribbean or Pacific, the US government strategy violates the norms of international law."

Colombia's Foreign Ministry said in a separate statement that the US must halt the attacks.

The US military previously carried out seven such operations in the Caribbean Sea from September, mainly against boats accused of trafficking drugs from Venezuela to the US.

READ MORE: Trump: US military struck Venezuelan drug boat again, killing 3

The total death toll has risen to at least 37, including the deaths in the latest two strikes in the eastern Pacific, reportedly near Colombia's Pacific coast.