US Southern Command said in a statement that its forces bombed an alleged drug-running boat in the Caribbean on Thursday, killing at least three people.
SOUTHCOM called the people it killed “narco-terrorists,” a term the Pentagon has employed in its attempts to justify what are extrajudicial executions for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US.
The attack brings the total number of people killed in the bombing campaign since it began in September of last year to at least 230, according to a count from The Intercept, which has noted all of the dead are civilians.
“It’s been a year of murders,” an unnamed US defense official told Intercept reporter Nick Turse. “The Trump administration has normalized murder … It’s absolutely criminal.”
The latest strike marked the first bombing of a small boat in the Caribbean or the Eastern Pacific Ocean announced by SOUTHCOM since August 25. Since that attack, SOUTHCOM has interdicted multiple larger fishing boats off the coast of Ecuador and removed the crew before blowing them up.
The US has accused the boats of acting as “floating refueling stations” that are operating “in support of illicit at-sea drug trafficking operations” on behalf of the Los Choneros gang, allegations that have been denied by crew members and relatives, who say they’re ordinary fishermen.
The US and Ecuador have ramped up military cooperation against alleged drug trafficking activity, which included the bombing of what the Ecuadorian government claimed was a drug camp inside Ecuador back in March, though a report from The New York Times found the facility was a dairy farm.
A series of mysterious drone attacks have also targeted Ecuadorian fishing boats, incidents first reported by Drop Site News. A report from The Washington Post recently revealed that the attacks were part of a covert CIA operation, the details of which remain shrouded in secrecy.
