US Southern Command said on Sunday that its forces bombed another alleged drug-running boat in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least three people, as the Trump administration has ramped up the bombing campaign in recent weeks.
SOUTHCOM offered no evidence to back up its claims that the boat was carrying narcotics, something the Pentagon hasn’t done for any of the vessels it has targeted, and several accounts from survivors and family members of victims of other strikes suggest the US has previously targeted fishing boats that weren’t running drugs.
SOUTHCOM described the three people it killed in the latest strike as “narco-terrorists,” a term the Trump administration has adopted to justify what are extra-judicial executions at sea for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US.
According to a count from The Intercept, the latest strike brings the total number of boats that have been destroyed to 56, and the number of people killed to at least 186. All of the dead were civilians since they were operating civilian vessels, were not engaged in combat, and didn’t pose any threat to the US at the time of the strikes.
Since the start of the very shaky ceasefire between the US and Iran, the US has dramatically ramped up its bombing campaign against small boats in the waters of Latin America, blowing up five in the Eastern Pacific Ocean within five days from April 11 to April 15.
Last month, the US military expanded its campaign in Latin America by supporting Ecuadorian forces 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.
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.
