The US military said on Saturday it conducted a strike on a boat in the eastern Pacific that killed three men, following an identical operation carried out one day earlier. Officials at US Southern Command announced the strike in a post on X, stating that intelligence had confirmed the vessel was transiting along established narco-trafficking routes.
“Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action,” the post said, adding that no US military forces were harmed. Friday’s strike, which also killed three men, was among four military operations carried out against boats in the region over the past seven days.
Those strikes have pushed the cumulative death toll from the campaign past 200 since last year. The Trump administration has publicly declared that the US is in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, accusing the groups of flooding American communities with illegal drugs.
The White House has not provided definitive evidence that the boats targeted on Friday or Saturday were actively engaged in drug trafficking. That gap between official claims and publicly released documentation has prompted debate over whether the military actions violate domestic and international law.
Human rights organizations have strongly criticized the operations. Representatives from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said the strikes amount to unlawful extrajudicial killings, arguing that lethal force in international waters without judicial process exceeds legal boundaries for counter-narcotics enforcement.
US Southern Command did not immediately respond to additional questions regarding the specific intelligence used to target Saturday’s vessel or whether any contraband was recovered following the strike.