The US military continued another strike in the Caribbean on Sunday against a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the region, killing two people and leaving six survivors, the Ministry of Defense said, amid an ongoing operation against suspected drug-traffickers in Latin America.
The latest attack — now more than 60 — brings the number of people killed on U.S. military boats to more than 210 since the Trump administration began targeting what it calls narcoterrorists in early September.
It is not clear whether the survivors of the strike have been rescued. In this case, as well as the June 16 strike that left two survivors, the US Southern Command said it notified the US Coast Guard.
The spokesman for the US Coast Guard said on Monday in a statement that the Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) Venezuela is leading the search for six survivors. The US Coast Guard had suspended its search for survivors of the June 16 strike the next day “with no sign of survivors or debris.”
Like most military statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, SOUTHCOM said it was targeting suspected drug smugglers on known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the ship was carrying drugs.
A black-and-white video posted on X shows the boat speeding through the water before being hit by a visible projectile and bursting into flames.
President Trump said the US is “in an armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and justified the attack as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and the drug overdoses that are killing Americans. But his administration has provided little evidence to support its allegations of killing “narcoterrorists.”
Critics of the strikes question their legitimacy and effectiveness. Part of the controversy has been that the fentanyl behind many of the US’s most lethal drugs is often smuggled into the country from Mexico, where it is produced from chemicals imported from China and India.
US lawmakers previously wanted the Pentagon to release “random video” of the first military strike after reports emerged that the US had chosen to carry out the next strike on survivors of its first attack.
Some lawmakers have questioned whether the strike was a war crime. The Defense Department and many Republicans in Congress insisted that the survivors might have continued to fight, authorizing the next strike.
The Pentagon’s watchdog said in May that it plans to check whether the US military is following a set of targets when conducting strikes. However, the analysis focused more on what is known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and not on the legality of the strikes, the inspector general’s office said.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the US Southern Command conducting the strikes, and they took place in the Caribbean.
