US Southern Command has announced that its forces bombed two more small boats it accused of carrying drugs in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least five people, as the US bombing campaign in the waters of Latin America continues.
As usual, the command offered no evidence to back up its claim that the boat was carrying drugs, something the Pentagon hasn’t done for any of the small vessels it has struck since the bombing campaign began in early September.
The command said that on one of the boats, at least two people were killed, and there was one survivor, though the status of the survivor two days after the strike is unclear. On the other vessel, SOUTHCOM said three people were killed.
SOUTHCOM described the victims of the strikes as “narco-terrorists,” a term employed by the Trump administration to attempt to justify 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 since it started in September 2025 to 168. 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.
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.
