The US military said it killed six men on Sunday in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, part of the campaign launched by Donald Trump’s administration against suspected traffickers.
The attack pushed the death toll to at least 157 since the administration began targeting what it calls “narcoterrorists” aboard small vessels in early September.
As with most of the more than 40 known strikes in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, the military’s regional command said the target was an alleged drug-trafficking boat operating along known smuggling routes. However, it did not provide evidence that the vessel was carrying drugs. A video posted on X showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water.
Trump has repeatedly said the US is in an “armed conflict” with Latin American cartels and has defended the strikes as a necessary escalation to curb the flow of drugs into the United States. His administration, however, has offered little public evidence to support its claims that those killed were “narcoterrorists.”
During a meeting with Latin American leaders on Saturday, Trump urged regional governments to join the United States in using military force against drug cartels and transnational gangs, which he described as an “unacceptable threat” to national security.
As part of that push, Ecuador and the US carried out joint military operations against organised crime groups in the South American country this past week.
The meeting was also intended to signal that the Trump administration remains focused on the Western Hemisphere, even as its war with Iran continues to reverberate across the Middle East.
Critics have questioned both the legality and effectiveness of the boat strikes. They note that fentanyl — responsible for many fatal overdoses in the US — is typically trafficked over land from Mexico, where it is manufactured using chemicals imported from China and India.
The operations have also drawn sharp criticism after it emerged that US forces carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors of the first boat attack. The Trump administration and several Republican lawmakers defended the move as lawful and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts argued the killings could amount to murder or even a war crime.
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