U.S. Military Strikes Alleged Drug Boat in Eastern Pacific, Killing 3
U.S. military strikes alleged drug trafficking boat in Eastern Pacific, killing three people. The attack brings total deaths from Trump administration boat strikes to 148 since September.
The U.S. military carried out a strike on a vessel accused of trafficking drugs in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on Friday, killing three people. U.S. Southern Command said the boat "was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations." A video linked to the announcement shows a boat floating in the water before bursting into flames.
The strike raises the death toll from the Trump administration's attacks on alleged drug boats to at least 148 people in at least 43 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. U.S. Southern Command said earlier this week that the military hit three boats on Monday, killing 11 people, in the Pacific and Caribbean.
President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in "armed conflict" with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. The Trump administration claims that the strikes are against "designated terrorist organizations" that are smuggling drugs.
The military has not provided evidence to support its allegations about the boats, the people on board, the cargo or the number of people killed or injured. The administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing "narcoterrorists."
The strikes have drawn intense criticism from some members of Congress as legally questionable. Critics have questioned the overall legality of the strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
The boat strikes drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.
In January, family members of two Trinidadian men who were killed in a U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in October sued the U.S. government over their deaths. It was the first wrongful death suit filed in connection with the military strikes. The suit alleges that the government carried out extrajudicial killings. The lawsuit says the men killed were fishing and were returning home when their boat was struck. A spokesperson for the Pentagon said at the time that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.