The US military struck three alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean on Monday night, killing all 11 people on board, US Southern Command said Tuesday.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” Southern Command said in a statement. “Eleven male narco-terrorists were killed during these actions, 4 on the first vessel in the Eastern Pacific, 4 on the second vessel in the Eastern Pacific, and 3 on the third vessel in the Caribbean. No U.S. military forces were harmed.
”
The strikes brought the death toll from the US campaign, which began in September, up to at least 135 people killed, with several more survivors of the strikes presumed dead. The last US strike on a suspected drug-trafficking vessel was carried out Friday in the Caribbean and killed three people, according to Southern Command.
Last fall, the Trump administration produced a classified legal opinion that justified the lethal strikes against a secret list of at least two dozen cartels and suspected drug traffickers classifying them as enemy combatants, CNN has reported.
The strikes came under intense scrutiny by legal experts and Democratic members of Congress who said they amounted to murdering civilians since the US was not in a declared, congressionally authorised war with drug cartels.
In at least one instance last September, the US military deliberately killed survivors after an initial strike on an alleged trafficking vessel did not kill everyone on board, prompting accusations that the US had committed a war crime and sparking congressional investigations.
Before the US military began blowing up boats in September, countering illicit drug trafficking was handled by law enforcement and the US Coast Guard, and cartel members and drug smugglers were treated as criminals with due process rights. The Coast Guard continued to interdict drug-trafficking vessels and seizing narcotics in the eastern Pacific without the use of lethal force.
