US military says five killed in strike on alleged drug boats
The US military said it crashed into two boats claiming to be carrying drugs on Wednesday, killing all five people on board.
US Southern Command did not say where the latest attacks took place, but US forces have been targeting ships they suspect of smuggling narcotics through the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific for the past three months.
Wednesday’s attack came a day after the US targeted “three drug smuggling vessels traveling in convoy”, killing at least three people.
The Trump administration treats its operations as a non-international armed conflict with alleged human traffickers, but legal experts say they may be violating laws governing such conflicts.
Since the US first attacked a boat in international waters on September 2, there have been more than 30 attacks on ships in total and more than 110 people have been killed as part of the Trump administration’s “war on drugs”.
This initial attack has drawn special scrutiny from lawmakers in Washington since it was revealed that US forces had hit the targeted boat twice.
The two people who survived the first attack and clung to the hull of their boat lost their lives in the second attack.
Some MPs have expressed concern that the “double tap” attack breaches the rules of engagement.
In its post announcing the attack on a convoy of three boats on December 30, the US Southern Command said that many people survived, without specifying how many survived.
He said that “the remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two ships, jumped overboard and distanced themselves before sinking the ships involved in subsequent clashes.”
It added that the US Coast Guard was “immediately notified” to search for survivors.
Reuters news agency reported that a US official, who wished to remain anonymous, said eight survivors were being sought.
It is not yet clear whether any of these have been found.
The US has provided no evidence that the boats it targeted were carrying drugs, but Southern Command reiterated in its latest dispatch that “intelligence confirms the ships were transiting known drug smuggling routes and were engaged in drug smuggling.”
