The death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats is up to 126 people, including those presumed dead after being lost at sea, the U.S. military said Monday.
The figure includes 116 people killed immediately in at least 36 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, U.S. Southern Command said. Ten others are believed dead because searchers did not locate them following a strike, the military said.
The military said eight of the presumed dead were among people who jumped off boats when American forces attacked three vessels accused of trafficking drugs on Dec. 30. The military said the number was not released previously, though it said at the time that the U.S. Coast Guard had searched for survivors. Two other people presumed dead were on boats attacked on Oct. 27 and last Friday.
President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America, and he has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. The administration has offered little evidence to support claims of killing “narcoterrorists,” critics have said, according to the report.
Critics also questioned the overall legality of the strikes and their effectiveness. They pointed, in part, to the fact that fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. overland from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
The campaign has faced intense criticism after revelations that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The report said the Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers described those killings as legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said they were murder, if not a war crime.
The report said the boat strikes began amid one of the largest buildups of U.S. military might in Latin America in generations, in a pressure campaign that culminated with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. It said he was brought to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges after a Jan. 3 raid by American forces.
After the Jan. 3 raid, the report said there has been one boat strike, while the U.S. has been more focused on seizing oil tankers connected with Venezuela as part of broader efforts to take control of the South American country’s oil. Republicans in Congress have also defeated Democratic-led efforts to rein in Trump’s ability to conduct further attacks in Venezuela.