WASHINGTON – The U.S. military said it carried out another strike Monday on a boat accused of trafficking drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people.
The campaign of attacks on vessels that the Trump administration says are trafficking drugs in Latin American waters has persisted for more than seven months and continues even as the military has been preoccupied for more than six weeks with the Iran war.
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It was the second day in a row that U.S. Southern Command announced a strike on social media. It said Sunday that it blew up two boats in the eastern Pacific on Saturday, killing a total of five people and leaving one survivor. It was not immediately clear what happened to that person.
With the latest attack Monday, at least 170 people have been killed in the boat strikes since the effort began in early September, months ahead of the U.S. raid in January that captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He was brought to New York to face drug trafficking charges and has pleaded not guilty.
U.S. Southern Command repeated previous statements by saying it had targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It posted a video on X showing a small boat floating in the water before a huge blast hits it and smoke is seen pouring from the vessel.
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.”
Trump on Monday appeared to reference the tactic of boat strikes in Latin America while issuing new threats against Tehran as a blockade of Iranian ports took effect.
“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.