The US military said on Wednesday that eight people had been killed in several new attacks targeting suspected drug-smuggling ships, bringing the death toll in Washington’s campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers to at least 115.
The US Southern Command, which oversees US forces in Central and South America, said the attacks were carried out in two separate operations on Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Tuesday, “three narcotics-trafficking vessels traveling as a convoy” were reported in “international waters”, it said in a statement to X.
“Three narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel were killed in the first engagement. The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels, jumped overboard and distanced themselves before subsequent engagements sank their respective vessels,” it said.
An accompanying statement, posted on X, was a video showing the vessels traveling together at sea and then being hit by a series of explosions.
The exact location of the blows was not immediately clear. Previous strikes have occurred in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific.
The navy said it had notified the Coast Guard to “activate a search and rescue system”, without offering more details about the fate of those aboard the other boats.
A few hours later, it issued a second statement about Wednesday’s attacks on two other vessels that killed five people. Again, it was unclear where the strikes occurred.
Since September, the U.S. military has carried out more than 30 such attacks on boats it says are used to smuggle drugs into the United States, without providing concrete evidence that the targeted ships are involved in human trafficking.
International law experts and human rights groups say the strikes likely constitute extrajudicial killings because they apparently targeted civilians who do not pose an immediate threat to the United States.
Meanwhile, the CIA was behind a drone strike last week on a docking area believed to be used by Venezuelan drug cartels, according to two people familiar with the details of the operation who requested anonymity to discuss classified matters, according to the Associated Press.
In recent months, US President Donald Trump has waged a pressure campaign against Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of leading a drug cartel. Maduro denies the allegation and has accused Washington of seeking regime change to gain access to the Latin American country’s vast oil reserves.
The latest strikes bring the total number of known boat attacks to 35, with at least 115 people killed since early September, according to figures released by the Trump administration.
Trump has defended the operations as a necessary measure to curb drug trafficking into the United States, calling the effort part of an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
(With input from agencies)
