The US announces a new strike against a suspected drug-trafficking boat. Three people were killed / Second operation in two days
The US military said on Saturday it had carried out a strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men. It is the second such operation within two days, notes The Guardian.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) officials said in a post on X that intelligence had confirmed the vessel was navigating drug-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific and was involved in drug-trafficking operations.
“Three male narco-terrorists were killed in this operation,” the message reads. “No US service members were injured.”
On Friday, the US military announced it had carried out another strike against a vessel accused of carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean. And in that case three men were killed, bringing to more than 200 the number of people killed in such US operations in recent months.
The strikes on Friday and Saturday were among four such operations carried out in the past week.
The Trump administration says the United States is in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, which it accuses of flooding American communities with narcotics. However, the White House has not presented conclusive evidence that the targeted vessels were involved in drug trafficking, fueling debate over the legality of such attacks.
Human rights experts and organizations contested the legality of the operations. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have stated that these constitute “illegal extrajudicial executions”.
