US says strike on Pacific boat kills five

The US military said it killed five people in a strike on a boat in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday, extending a campaign against vessels it says are involved in drug trafficking. Legal experts and rights groups have challenged the strikes, while the Trump administration maintains they are necessary to stop drugs from reaching the United States.

US Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said the strike took place on October 27. In a social media post, it said a military task force had targeted a speedboat traveling along established trafficking routes.

“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking,” the command said. “The operation killed five narco-terrorists.”

The administration has not provided definitive public evidence to support its trafficking allegations, according to The Guardian. Al Jazeera reported that the government has rarely shared details substantiating its claims about the people targeted. Relatives of some of those killed in the broader campaign have said they were fishermen or other workers who were not involved in the drug trade, Al Jazeera reported.

The reported death toll now stands at 243, according to Al Jazeera. Before Tuesday’s strike, a tracker maintained by the Washington Office on Latin America, a US-based research group, had recorded at least 238 deaths in 68 reported strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since the campaign began in September 2025.

The Guardian cited media tallies showing more than 70 such attacks since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, with more than 240 people killed. The two counts use different reported starting points and totals.

Trump has said the United States is in an armed conflict with Latin American cartels and has defended the strikes as a way to stem the flow of drugs into the country. His administration has designated numerous Latin American criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations, Al Jazeera reported.

Legal experts and rights groups dispute the administration’s justification. They argue that targeting people who appear to be civilians and pose no immediate threat to the United States could amount to extrajudicial killings. Legal experts cited by Al Jazeera also say drug trafficking is a criminal activity that does not permit military strikes.

Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America who tracks the campaign, said Tuesday’s attack was the sixth lethal boat strike in four months. “The pace is slower than before,” he wrote in a social media post, but said the strikes were continuing “with no discernible impact on the drug trade.”