The US military attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, killing three people, as the Trump administration wages a months-long campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America.
The latest attack brings the number of people the US military has killed in boat strikes to at least 211 since the Trump administration began targeting people it calls “narcoterrorists” in early September.
As with most of the military’s statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, US Southern Command said it targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. A video posted on X showed a boat speeding through the water before being struck and bursting into flames.
Donald Trump has said the US is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and fatal overdoses claiming American lives. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists”.
Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
Senators on Thursday demanded that the Pentagon release “unedited video” of the strikes. They have drawn intense scrutiny from some Democratic lawmakers and military legal scholars. The US military’s first strike in early September drew particular concern from some lawmakers and people who study military law .
Two men on that boat survived the initial attack that killed nine others, and were clinging to the wreckage, when the US struck the vessel again, killing them. The White House confirmed the follow-up strike, insisting it had been made “in self-defense” to ensure the boat was destroyed and in accordance with the laws of armed conflict.
But some legal scholars said a second strike killing survivors would have been illegal under any circumstance, armed conflict or not.
The Pentagon’s watchdog said in May that it plans to look into whether the US military followed an established targeting framework when carrying out the strikes. However, the evaluation is focused specifically on what’s known as the six-phase joint targeting cycle and not on the legality of the strikes, the inspector general’s office said.