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The US military killed four people in a strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean, the latest in a campaign that has killed more than 200 people and drawn condemnation from rights groups.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JO90 Advertisement The US military struck a boat in the Caribbean Sea on Tuesday, killing four people, US Southern Command said.
It's the latest action in a nearly yearlong controversial campaign by President Donald Trump's administration targeting alleged drug traffickers in Latin America.
"Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed four narco-terrorists," Southern Command said in a post on X, accompanied by a video showing what appeared to be a boat in motion, followed by a flash.
The command did not identify those killed or give a precise location, saying only that the boat was operating along established smuggling routes in the Caribbean.
No evidence was released showing the vessel carried drugs.
Fishers in Colombia worry as US strikes alleged drug boats To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
According to a count by AP news agency, the strike brings the death toll to at least 227 people across 68 strikes since the campaign began about a year ago. Reuters news agency, tracking Caribbean and Eastern Pacific strikes together, put the total above 210.
Tuesday's strike followed another one in the Eastern Pacific over the weekend that killed two people. The weekend strike was the first by the US military in more than two months.
Rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and independent United Nations investigators, say the strikes violate international law and amount to extrajudicial killings.
Trump says the United States is engaged in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels operating in the region and has framed the strikes as necessary to clamp down on the drug trade and its toll on American lives. But his administration has not made public the evidence behind its claims that those killed were trafficking narcotics.
The campaign is also expanding, with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth saying this month that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow joint US military operations against criminal groups within their borders. Guatemala has disputed that any such agreement was reached.
Ecuador began similar joint operations with the US in March.
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