The US military has carried out a strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing three men, the second such attack in as many days. The US Southern Command confirmed the strike on Saturday, stating that intelligence indicated the vessel was travelling along “narco-trafficking” routes and engaged in “narco-trafficking” operations.
“Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action,” the command posted on X. “No US military forces were harmed.” The attack followed a similar strike on Friday that also killed three men, pushing the overall death toll from such US strikes over the past several months to more than 200 people.
Friday’s and Saturday’s strikes were among four carried out over the previous week. The Trump administration has declared the US to be in armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, accusing them of flooding the country with drugs. However, the White House has not provided definitive evidence that the vessels were involved in drug trafficking, sparking debate over the legality of the strikes.
Human rights experts and advocates have challenged the operations, with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International describing them as “unlawful extrajudicial killings”.
