US Southern Command announced on Sunday that its forces blew up another alleged drug-running boat in the waters of Latin America and killed at least six people, marking the first known US boat strike since the US and Israel launched the war against Iran.
SOUTHCOM said that the strike targeted the small vessel in the Eastern Pacific, and the command provided no evidence to back up its claim that the boat was targeting drugs, something the Pentagon has never done since launching the bombing campaign in September 2025.
SOUTHCOM described the six 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.
According to a count from Airwars, the strike brings the total number of people killed in the bombing campaign to 157. 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.
The last boat strike announced by SOUTHCOM was launched on February 23. The bombing campaign against small boats is part of a US military campaign dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” which also involved the January 3 attack on Venezuela to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
In another escalation of the US military campaign, the US announced last week that it was conducting military operations in Ecuador alongside the government against cartels. It’s unclear if US troops participated in combat in the operations, which involved raids carried out by Ecuador’s special forces against suspected cartel facilities.
