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A U.S. military strike killed two men accused of being “narco-terrorists” while aboard a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday.
U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) stated in a post on the social platform X that the strike was carried out as part of “Operation Southern Spear” against a vessel “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations.”
Southcom commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan directed the strike.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” Southcom stated, adding that six men who survived and the U.S. Coast Guard was activated for a search and rescue mission.
Southcom also shared video of the boat moments speeding through the water before it was struck and subsequently engulfed in flames.
The strike comes days after a separate strike on another boat allegedly trafficking drugs, which left three dead. Strikes on alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean have killed at least 212 since early September.
President Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels, and he has claimed that the strikes do not require congressional authorization. Law-of-war experts have argued that the government is violating international law.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in November that the goal of “Operation Southern Spear” was to remove “narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and [secure] our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people.”
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have sought more answers about the boat strikes after an initial set of strikes killed survivors aboard the wreckage of one alleged drug-smuggling boat in September. Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing in connection with the attack, which some Democratic lawmakers said amounted to a war crime.
Last week, senators slipped into the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provisions to hold back three-quarters of the Defense secretary’s travel budget until both the House and Senate armed services panels receive unedited video about the boat strikes, as well as more information about the bombing of an Iranian all-girls elementary school at the start of the U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran.
Trump last Wednesday told reporters during a press conference that the military’s probe into the bombing of the elementary school was still ongoing, but said he could “have a report for you tomorrow.” He referred the reporter to Hegseth, who was not with the president at the time.
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