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The US military on Tuesday said it carried out strikes on three alleged drug boats, killing 11 people, in one of the deadliest days of the Trump administration’s monthslong campaign against alleged traffickers.
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Like most of the military’s statements on the 42 known strikes, US Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes.
According to the command, two vessels carrying four people each were struck in the eastern Pacific Ocean, while a third boat with three people was hit in the Caribbean Sea.
The military did not provide evidence that the vessels were ferrying drugs but videos posted by Southern Command on X show the boats either moving or bobbing in the water before the explosions engulf them in flames.
Monday’s round of attacks increased the number of fatalities to at least 145 since the Trump administration began targeting people it refers to as “narcoterrorists” aboard small boats in Caribbean waters since September.
US President Donald Trump has said Washington is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs.
Questions remain over legality of strikes
Critics have questioned the overall legality of the strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
The boat strikes also drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.
The latest attacks followed the Trump administration’s operation of one of the largest buildups of US military might in Latin America in generations as part of a pressure campaign that culminated with the capture of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan leader was brought to the US to face drug trafficking charges after a 3 January raid by US forces.
Since Maduro’s capture, the US military has reported several boat strikes, while US forces have also seized oil tankers connected with Venezuela as part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to take control of the South American country’s oil.
Late last year, the Trump administration deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, and as tensions between the US and Iran grow, it was told last week to head to the Middle East.
The USS Gerald R. Ford and three accompanying destroyers were in the mid-Atlantic on Tuesday and no longer in the US Southern Command’s area of operations, according to an unnamed Navy official quoted in media reports.
The Ford will bolster an array of US warships in the Middle East that includes the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.
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