The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said it had carried out its second deadly boat strike this week. The command said the latest strike killed three suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean on Friday.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the Southern Command said in a statement. The command included a video of the strike with its announcement, which shows a boat traveling through the water as it explodes into flames after being hit with what looks like a missile.
The Southern Command and the Pentagon did not immediately return requests for additional information.
The Friday strike comes after the Southern Command announced a deadly attack on another boat in the eastern Pacific on Monday. That hit resulted in the deaths of two suspected drug smugglers, with one survivor.
Friday’s killings bring the death toll to at least 133 people in 39 strikes, according to Pentagon statements tallied by the Intercept. This appears to be the command’s first strike in the Caribbean since November; the vast majority of the most recent strikes have happened in the Pacific.
The legality of these boat strikes is under scrutiny, with legal experts saying the attacks amount to extrajudicial killings by the Pentagon with a complete lack of accountability.
“Those being killed by US military strikes at sea are denied any due process whatsoever,” reads an analysis published Friday by the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy organization. The Trump administration is “asserting and exercising an apparently unlimited license to kill people that the president deems to be terrorists”.
Earlier this month, Gen Francis L Donovan was sworn in as the new head of the Southern Command. Donovan took over after Alvin Holsey, a US navy admiral, chose to retire over reported disagreements over the boat-strike policy.
Friday’s strike in the Caribbean comes after the US launched an attack on the capital of Venezuela in early January, apprehending then-president Nicolás Maduro on alleged drug-trafficking charges. The Pentagon has framed its operations in the region as a campaign against “narco-terrorism”, but has provided scant evidence of coordinated drug-smuggling rings.
