US Military Kills Two in Latest Eastern Pacific Strike Amid Controversy Over “Narco-Terrorism” Claims

The US military announced it killed two people and left one survivor in a missile strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, marking the third such attack in May alone. US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which oversees operations in the Caribbean and Latin America, released a video showing the boat engulfed in flames after the strike.

SOUTHCOM claimed the targeted vessel was operated by “Designated Terrorist Organizations” engaged in narcotics trafficking along known drug routes. However, the military provided no evidence to back up these assertions. The statement emphasized that no US forces were harmed during the operation.

Since September, the US has conducted a controversial campaign targeting suspected narco-traffickers in the region, reportedly killing over 170 people. The Trump administration has aggressively framed drug trafficking as an armed attack on the US and labeled many criminal groups as terrorist organizations to justify these lethal strikes.

But international legal experts, human rights advocates, and regional leaders have condemned the strikes as unlawful extrajudicial killings. They argue there is no declared armed conflict to legitimize such military actions and stress that suspected traffickers should be apprehended and tried under the law, not summarily executed.

Families in Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago have come forward after previous strikes, insisting those killed were not “narco-terrorists” but rather fishermen and informal workers simply traveling routine routes between the Caribbean and South America.

This latest attack underscores the Trump administration’s troubling pattern of expanding military force under the guise of counter-narcotics, raising urgent questions about accountability, legality, and the true human toll of these operations.