The U.S. military continued its campaign against alleged drug-trafficking boats, blowing up three vessels in the eastern Pacific on Monday and killing eight “narcoterrorists” in total.
All three vessels were operated by designated terrorist organizations and were targeted in international waters. It is unclear which terrorist groups the U.S. military was referring to.
Three people were killed in the first vessel, two in the second attack and three in the third blow, the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) announced in a post Monday night.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” Southcom said.
The military attached a 47-second video of the strikes.
The U.S. military has conducted a minimum of 25 strikes against purported drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 95 narco-terrorists” since early September when the military campaign kicked off.
The Monday operations are the latest action by the military in the Southcom area against alleged drug-smuggling boats since early December, when U.S. forces took out a purported drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing four “narco-terrorists.”
The boat strikes have prompted pushback from Democrats and some law-of-war experts who have argued the strikes are illegal under international law. Lawmakers have scrutinized the Sept. 2 attack against a purported drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean, where the U.S. military killed two survivors in a so-called double-tap strike. The first two strikes killed 11 people on board, while the third and fourth strikes sank the vessel.
The Trump administration has briefed lawmakers on the ongoing, lethal operations and is set to continue to do so on Tuesday when all senators are set to receive a classified briefing on the ongoing strikes by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chair of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, a Democratic congressional aide, told The Hill on Monday.