WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday the United States (US) was sending two suspected drug traffickers back to their native Ecuador and Colombia, after a military strike on their “drug-smuggling submarine” in the Caribbean that killed two others.

“It was my great honour to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well-known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump said on Truth Social, adding that the vessel was loaded with fentanyl and other drugs.

“Two of the terrorists were killed. The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.”

The strike, which Trump had announced on Friday, was the latest in an unprecedented US military campaign that he says is aimed at choking the flow of drugs from Latin America to the United States.

At least six vessels, most of them speedboats, have been targeted by US strikes in the Caribbean since September, with Venezuela alleged to be the origin of some of them.

Washington says its campaign is dealing a decisive blow to drug trafficking, but it has provided no evidence that the people killed — at least 27 so far — were drug smugglers.

Experts say such summary killings are illegal even if they target confirmed narcotics traffickers.

Washington has not revealed the departure point of the alleged drug-smuggling submarine.

Semi-submersibles built in clandestine jungle shipyards have for years been used to ferry cocaine from South America, particularly Colombia, to Central America or Mexico, usually via the Pacific Ocean.