The United States kills 11 people in three new strikes on alleged drug‑running boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific
The new attacks come after the departure of the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, which since October had been part of the Southern Spear counternarcotics mission
U.S. forces have sunk three alleged drug‑running boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, in attacks that left 11 people dead, according to U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in Latin America. The strikes came after the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford departed the Caribbean; it had been sent there in October as part of Operation Southern Spear, an anti‑narcotics mission the Trump administration used to pressure Venezuela in the months leading up to the operation that captured president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas on January 3.
According to a statement from Southern Command, the three attacks were carried out late Monday against alleged “narco‑terrorists,” in the Trump administration’s words. Two of the strikes took place in the eastern Pacific, each killing four men. In the third attack, in the Caribbean, three people were killed. “No U.S. military forces were harmed,” the military command said.
“At the direction of the commander of U.S. Southern Command, Marine Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted three lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” Southern Command said in the statement, which — as has become customary — was accompanied by a video showing the boats exploding after being hit by a missile. “Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” it added.
The new strikes follow another one last Friday, in which U.S. Armed Forces destroyed a fourth alleged drug‑running boat with a missile, killing its three crew members. Since September 2, when Trump announced the first attack on a vessel allegedly involved in drug trafficking, Washington has acknowledged more than 40 strikes, which have left around 150 people dead.
The U.S. government maintains that such attacks are fully legal and an appropriate response to cartels included on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. However, numerous experts and several lawmakers — most of them from the Democratic opposition — argue that these are extrajudicial executions that violate international law and U.S. law.
In January, two families in Trinidad and Tobago filed the first lawsuit in U.S. courts against the government in Washington over the deaths of two of their relatives in one of the U.S. attacks on alleged drug‑running boats in the Caribbean on October 14.
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