US Southern Command announced on Monday that its forces bombed another alleged drug-running boat in the waters of Latin America, and said that the attack killed at least two people.
SOUTHCOM said the strike targeted a boat in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and it offered no evidence to back up its claim that the small vessel was carrying drugs, something that the Pentagon hasn’t done for any of the boats it has blown up since the bombing campaign started in September 2025.
According to The Intercept, the latest strike brings the total number of boats that have been destroyed to 51 and the total number of people who’ve been killed in the campaign to 171.
All of the people killed have been civilians, as they were not engaged in combat and didn’t pose any threat to the US at the time of the strikes. The Trump administration labels the people it kills as “narco-terrorists,” a term that it uses to justify what are extrajudicial executions at sea for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US.
Much of the attention on the bombing campaign has focused on a September 2 attack that involved a double-tap strike to kill survivors, which has been widely condemned as a war crime. But many legal experts say that the entire bombing campaign is clearly illegal under US and international law since the US military has no right to bomb civilian vessels.
Last month, the US military escalated its campaign in Latin America by supporting Ecuadorian against alleged drug targets in Ecuador, an effort dubbed “Operation Total Extermination.”
According to a report from The New York Times, one of the first operations involved bombing what the US and Ecuador claimed was a drug camp, but turned out to be a dairy farm, raising questions about the credibility of the US military’s intelligence in the region and claims about what it’s targeting.
US military operations in the region also included the January 3 attack on Venezuela to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The US assault on Venezuela killed 83 people, including four civilians.
