Death toll from U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats climbs above 200 with latest attack

The U.S. military said it carried out another strike Friday on a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men in the third attack this week and pushing the overall death toll above 200 people.

U.S. Southern Command — which manages U.S. military operations in the region of Latin America south of Mexico, and the Caribbean — announced the latest strike in the monthslong campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific with its usual language that the vessel was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and operated by a designated terrorist organization. It provided no evidence.

While the military’s social media announcements always include video of the attacks, this appears to be the first with the footage in color instead of black and white. The video shows a small vessel floating in the ocean before it’s hit and engulfed in a fireball. It cuts to what could be the boat in flames, surrounded by a large plume of parcels or some other objects spread around it in the water.

U.S. Southern Command said in its post on X that the strike came at the direction of Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the top U.S. commander in Latin America, who on Friday also met with Cuban military leaders near the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay.

The attack raises the death toll to at least 202 people from the series of U.S. strikes that began in early September, with two other attacks announced Tuesday and Wednesday. The Trump administration has declared that the U.S. is at armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, saying they are behind the flow of drugs into American communities.

The death toll also rose slightly this week because some people that had been initially reported by the U.S. military as survivors of the strikes have not been found.

The legality of the boat strikes has come under scrutiny by experts. The White House later confirmed a Washington Post report that in the first attack, which occurred on Sept. 2, the U.S. conducted a follow-on strike, or so-called double tap, that killed two survivors of the initial strike on the vessel.

Some lawmakers have questioned whether that follow-on strike constituted a war crime.