US Southern Command announced on Monday that its forces blew up yet another boat it accused of running drugs, killing three people.
The command said the boat was targeted in the Caribbean Sea and described the people it killed as “narco-terrorists,” a term used by the Trump administration to justify conducting extra-judicial executions at sea for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US.
SOUTHCOM said the strike was launched at the direction of its commander, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, who replaced Adm. Alvin Holsey, the former commander who stepped down after reportedly voicing concerns about the bombing campaign.
As usual, SOUTHCOM provided no evidence to back up its claim that the small vessel was carrying narcotics, something the Pentagon hasn’t done for any of the boats it has targeted since the bombing campaign began in early September.
According to numbers from the monitoring group Airwars, the latest strike brings the total number of people killed in the US boat strikes to at least 150, a number that accounts for people the US military said survived an initial strike but were never rescued. Airwars classifies all the deaths as civilians since they are non-combatants and posed no threat to the US military at the time of the attacks.
There was a brief lull in the US airstrikes on small boats following the January 3 US attack on Venezuela, which killed 83 people, including four civilians, and resulted in the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. But in recent weeks, the US has escalated the attacks on boats.
