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The US military said it carried out another strike on a boat suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men.
The latest deadly attack marks the fourth this week, and has put the total death toll at 205.
US Southern Command announced the strike, stating that the vessel was ‘engaged in a narco-trafficking operation’ by a designated terrorist organisation.
The attack is the latest in a month-long campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific.
Video released by the military on social media showed a small vessel floating in the ocean before it was hit and engulfed in a fireball.
The attack brings the death toll to 205 in a series of US strikes that began in early September, with other attacks announced on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
The Trump administration has declared that the US is at armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, saying they are behind the flow of illicit substances into American communities.
US Southern Command said in its post on X that the strike came at the direction of General Francis L Donovan, the top US commander in Latin America.
In September, a strike against a Venezuelan gang in the Caribbean left 11 people dead in international waters, prompting questions about the legality of the attack.
The operation was carried out in international waters off the Caribbean, and those on board were alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which is a designated foreign terrorist organisation in the US.
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called the strikes ‘extrajudicial killing’.
Trump’s deployment of the military to the Caribbean last year was a drastic change in the normal approach to intercepting drug trafficking boats.
The Coast Guard and law enforcement would work together to intercept, board the boats, and seize any illegal items.
The method now appears to ‘blow them up, get rid of them’, in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in September.
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