U.S. military strike on alleged drug boat in Pacific Ocean kills 3 people in fourth attack this week

The U.S. military said it carried out another strike Saturday on a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men in the fourth attack this week and putting the total death toll at 205.

U.S. Southern Command announced the strike with its usual language that the vessel was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and operated by a designated terrorist organization. It provided no evidence for the allegation.

It’s the latest in a monthslong campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific.

Video released by the military on social media shows a small vessel moving in the ocean before it’s hit and engulfed in a fireball.

The attack brings the death toll to 205 in a series of U.S. strikes that began in early September, with other attacks announced on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. 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 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.

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. Donovan on Friday also met with Cuban military leaders near the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay.

The legality of the boat strikes has come under scrutiny by experts. The White House 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. 

To date, only three people are known to have survived strikes and then been rescued. Two were rescued from a “narco sub” accused of carrying drugs in October and later returned to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

In March, the U.S. Coast Guard said it recovered a survivor of a strike that killed two others and transferred the survivor to Costa Rican authorities.

Earlier this year, the families of two Trinidadian men who were killed in a U.S. missile strike on a boat in the Caribbean sued the Trump administration in federal court, arguing the “premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification.”