WASHINGTON — The U.S. military launched another strike against a vessel accused of carrying illegal drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, killing two people on board while six others survived, as part of an ongoing campaign targeting alleged drug traffickers in Latin America.
This latest attack is among more than 60 such strikes conducted since the Trump administration began going after those it labels “narcoterrorists” in early September. The cumulative death toll from these boat strikes has now surpassed 210 people.
It remains unknown whether the six survivors from Thursday’s strike — or the two survivors from a separate strike carried out on June 16 — were ever rescued. In both incidents, U.S. Central Command stated that the U.S. Coast Guard was notified. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions about the outcome.
As has been the case with most of the military’s announcements regarding strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command stated that it targeted suspected drug traffickers along known smuggling corridors. No evidence was provided by the military that the boat was actually transporting drugs.
A black and white video shared on the social media platform X showed a boat moving quickly through the water before a visible projectile struck it, causing the vessel to erupt in flames.
President Donald Trump has characterized the situation as the U.S. being in “armed conflict” with cartels operating in Latin America, framing the attacks as a necessary step to reduce the flow of drugs into the country and prevent fatal overdoses among Americans. However, his administration has provided little evidence to back up its assertions that those killed were “narcoterrorists.”
Critics have raised concerns about both the legal basis for these strikes and whether they are actually effective. A central argument against the campaign is that fentanyl — the drug responsible for many deadly overdoses in the United States — is generally smuggled overland from Mexico, where it is manufactured using chemicals imported from China and India.
On Thursday, members of Congress called on the Pentagon to release “unedited video” of the very first military strike, following reports that the U.S. carried out a second strike on survivors of that initial attack. Two men who initially survived the first strike — which killed nine others — were holding onto the wreckage when the boat was hit again, killing them both. The White House confirmed the follow-up strike took place, arguing it was done “in self-defense” to ensure the vessel was destroyed and that it was consistent with the laws of armed conflict.
Some legal experts, however, have argued that striking survivors a second time would have been unlawful under any circumstances, regardless of whether an armed conflict designation applies.
The Pentagon’s internal watchdog announced in May that it intended to examine whether the military followed an established targeting process when conducting the strikes. That review, according to the inspector general’s office, is focused specifically on what is known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and does not address the broader question of whether the strikes themselves are legal.
