The U.S. military launched another attack Tuesday on a ship in the eastern Pacific suspected of carrying drugs, killing three men.
In one Social media postThe U.S. Southern Command said its commander, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, ordered a “lethal kinetic attack” on a boat allegedly operated by “Designated Terrorist Organizations” and “involved in drug trafficking,” but without providing evidence. It also included unclassified video of the strike.
The attack came a day after US forces beaten a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean Sea that killed two people.
The Trump administration’s campaign to blow up suspected drug trafficking ships in Latin American waters has been ongoing since early September and has killed a total of at least 190 people, according to the Pentagon.
Despite the Iran war, the strikes have started up This shows that the government’s aggressive measures to curb what it calls “narcoterrorism” in the Western Hemisphere are showing no signs of abating. The military has provided no evidence that any of the ships were carrying drugs.
The attacks began as the U.S. was building its largest military presence in the region in generations and came months before the January attack captured that the then Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He was taken to New York to face drug trafficking charges and pleaded not guilty.
In Tuesday’s attack, the US Southern Command again said it had targeted suspected drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. A video was posted on X showing a boat sailing across the water before a massive explosion sets the ship ablaze.
President Trump said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. and fatal overdoses that have claimed American lives. But his government has provided little evidence to back up its claims of killing “narco terrorists.”
Critics, meanwhile, have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes.
