WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said Saturday that it attacked a boat suspected of drug smuggling in the Caribbean Sea, killing four people. U.S. Southern Command said the vessel was targeted along a known smuggling route. The command did not release evidence that drugs were aboard, identify the people killed or provide details about the boat’s location. A video posted on X showed what appeared to be a moving boat followed by a flash. The military has not publicly offered additional details about the strike. The operation brings the reported death toll from U.S. military strikes on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean to at least 231 people across 69 attacks since the Trump administration began targeting alleged drug traffickers nearly a year ago. Officials have described those targets as “narcoterrorists.” The strikes are part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to portray drug cartels as a national-security threat and to expand military cooperation with governments across Latin America. Trump has said the United States is in an “armed conflict” with cartels and has defended the attacks as necessary to reduce drug shipments and overdose deaths in the United States. The administration has provided limited public evidence supporting its claims about those killed in the boat operations. That lack of publicly released evidence has intensified questions about the legal basis for using lethal military force against suspected smugglers and about how the targets are identified. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during an August visit to Panama that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow joint U.S. military operations against criminal groups on their territory. Guatemala denied that it had reached such an agreement. Ecuador began similar missions with U.S. support in March. The latest strike adds to the administration’s widening campaign while leaving unresolved what evidence was used to classify the boat and its occupants as a military target.