U.S. forces have struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of trafficking drugs, the Department of Defense said Monday, in the first attack announced in about two months.
The death toll in the nearly yearlong U.S. campaign of bombing boats allegedly trafficking drugs now exceeds 210 after more than 60 strikes off Latin America’s Caribbean coast and in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Forces “executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narcotrafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific,” U.S. Southern Command said on social media.
As with most of the military’s statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It is the first strike since powerful back-to-back June 24 earthquakes that killed thousands of people.
“We are committed to imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists – disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership, and eliminating cartel terror across the region,” said Gen. Francis Donovan, who leads U.S. Southern Command.
The latest strike comes as the Trump administration pursues deals with allied nations to extend its offensive to land across multiple Latin American countries. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to Panama this month that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow the U.S. to carry out joint military operations against criminal groups on their soil. Guatemala denied reaching such a deal.
Ecuador launched similar missions with the U.S. in March.
President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and fatal overdoses claiming American lives. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”
Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
The strikes, which began in early September, have drawn intense scrutiny from some Democratic lawmakers and military legal scholars.
The Pentagon’s watchdog said in May that it plans to look into whether the U.S. military followed an established targeting framework when carrying out the strikes. However, the evaluation is focused specifically on what’s known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and not on the legality of the strikes, the inspector general’s office said.
