The U.S. military said it attacked another boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday, killing three people and raising the death toll to at least 185 in the campaign against people the Trump administration accuses of smuggling drugs at sea.
The strike was ordered by Gen. Francis L. Donovan of the Marine Corps, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, the command said on social media.
An accompanying video showed a boat bursting into flames as it moved through open water. The command said that three male “narco-terrorists” were killed and that the vessel had been traveling along “known narco-trafficking routes.” The command did not provide evidence for those claims.
Officials said no U.S. forces were harmed.
It was the 54th U.S. military strike on a boat in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific since September, when the Trump administration began its campaign against drug smuggling in the region. It was the seventh such strike this month.
A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called the killings illegal, saying the military is not allowed to deliberately target civilians who pose no imminent threat of violence.
The White House has said the killings are lawful, arguing that President Trump has “determined” that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that crews of drug-running boats are “combatants.”
