US Southern Command said on Wednesday that its forces bombed three more alleged drug boats that were traveling as a convoy and suggested there may have been survivors.
SOUTHCOM said the strike killed at least three “narco-terrorists,” a term the Trump administration uses to justify extra-judicial executions for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US.
“The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels,” the command wrote on X, adding that it notified the US Coast Guard to “activate the Search and Rescue System.”
SOUTHCOM, which oversees US military operations in Central and South America, did not specify the location of the latest strikes. The bombing campaign against small boats started in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela and has expanded into the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Previous US attacks on boats in the region have left survivors, including a Colombian national and an Ecuadorian, who were both sent back to their home countries and released due to the lack of evidence that they committed a crime. According to a report from The New York Times, the Pentagon released the survivors to ensure that they did not end up in the US judicial system, where the Trump administration could be forced to show evidence justifying the bombing campaign.
In one incident, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that Mexican authorities rescued the survivor of a US strike. Hegseth and the administration have been under scrutiny for the September 2 bombing that involved multiple strikes to kill survivors.
The latest US boat bombing brings the total number of people extra-judicially executed by the US military at sea to at least 110, and the number of vessels that have been destroyed to 34.
