DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
The US military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) claimed the vessel was involved in drug trafficking, without providing any evidence.
Published On 21 Feb 2026
The United States military said it attacked a boat in the eastern Pacific, killing three people, in the latest strike on a vessel in international waters that Washington alleges was involved in drug trafficking.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is responsible for military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, said three men were killed in the attack on Friday, describing the operation as a “lethal kinetic strike” in an area of the Pacific Ocean that was a “known narco-trafficking route”.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
No evidence was provided to support the US military’s claim that the three victims were involved in drug trafficking.
The killings on Friday raise the death toll from US President Donald Trump’s administration’s attacks on vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea to at least 148 people killed in some 43 attacks carried out by the US military since early September.
Latin American leaders, legal experts and human rights workers have questioned the legality of the military campaign, accusing US forces of carrying out extrajudicial killings in international waters where Washington has no jurisdiction.
A short video clip, apparently featuring the latest attack, was released on social media by SOUTHCOM, showing a stationary boat with outboard engines bursting into flames and drifting after being hit by US fire.
Earlier this week, SOUTHCOM said it carried out three attacks on vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean, killing 11 people in total.
Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said the US military’s announcements of its attacks on vessels amounted to confessing to the “murder of civilians at sea”.
“US leaders must be held accountable by US or international justice,” Saul said.
Officials in the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Admiral Frank Bradley, have come under scrutiny for reports that the first attack on a vessel, which took place in September 2025, included a follow-up strike that killed survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of a boat.
Legal experts said the US military committed a crime if it deliberately targeted and killed the survivors of a shipwreck.
Critics have also questioned why the Trump administration is targeting alleged drug trafficking by sea when the fentanyl, which is responsible for many fatal overdoses in the US, is more commonly smuggled into the US by land from neighbouring Mexico.
Source link
