US military kills two more people in strike on alleged drug boat in Pacific | US military
us army announced On Friday, it said it had killed two people in an attack on a boat in the eastern Pacific, part of a series of deadly attacks on ships it claimed were targeting “drug smuggling” operations in recent months.
US Southern Command announced in its social media post on X that General Francis L Donovan directed Joint Task Force Southern Spear, an anti-narcotics unit operating in the region, to carry out a deadly attack. The US military released a video it labeled as declassified, showing a small boat being destroyed in an explosion.
The US campaign targeting boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific has killed at least 178 people since last September, but there is no detailed evidence behind military officials’ claims that the targeted ships were involved in drug smuggling. Legal experts argue that the US military violated domestic and international law in carrying out its attacks, and the families of two Trinidadian men killed in the attack have filed a lawsuit against the government.
SouthCom has published a steady stream of social posts announcing its strikes in recent months; these are often accompanied by low-resolution video showing ships blown up in US attacks. The Trump administration has defended its attacks as legal, claiming that it abides by the laws of conflict because the United States is at war with drug cartels.
Donald Trump also claimed that military action was necessary to prevent overdose deaths in the United States and stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country. “What we’re doing is actually an act of kindness,” Trump said of the strikes last year.
Civil rights groups have vowed to challenge the legality of the deadly attacks through all available means. UN officials announced We consider the US campaign a clear violation of human rights.
“We are doing everything we can to hold the Trump administration accountable for its egregious violations of both U.S. and international law, including asking the widely respected Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate these heinous murders,” Jamil Dakwar, director of the Civil Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement last month.
