The U.S. military attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, killing three people, as the Trump administration wages a monthslong campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America.
The latest attack brings the number of people who have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military to at least 211 since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in early September.
As with most of the military’s statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said in a social media post the boat was “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes.” The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs.
The military said the boat was operated by “Designated Terrrorist Organizations.” It did not name the specific organization, but the Trump administration has designated several Latin American gangs and drug cartels as terror groups.
A video posted on X showed a boat speeding through the water before being struck and bursting into flames.
President Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and fatal overdoses claiming American lives.
Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has argued some of the boats’ passengers were innocent — a charge the Trump administration has denied — and has cast them as an ineffective strategy for fighting cartels.
“Killing the business’ workers is easy,” Petro said in an interview with CBS News last fall. “But if you want to be effective, you have to capture the bosses of the business.”
Senators on Thursday demanded that the Pentagon release “unedited video” of the strikes. They have drawn intense scrutiny from some Democratic lawmakers and military legal scholars. The U.S. military’s first strike in early September drew particular concern from some lawmakers and those who study military law.
Two men on the boat in that initial strike initially survived the attack that killed nine others, and they were clinging to the wreckage when the vessel was struck again, killing them. The White House confirmed the follow-up strike, insisting it was done “in self-defense” to ensure the boat was destroyed and in accordance with the laws of armed conflict.
But some legal scholars said a second strike killing survivors would have been illegal under any circumstance, armed conflict or not.
The Pentagon’s watchdog said in May that it plans to look into whether the U.S. military followed an established targeting framework when carrying out the strikes. However, the evaluation is focused specifically on what’s known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and not on the legality of the strikes, the inspector general’s office said.
