Since September, the US Army has carried out more than 30 such attacks against what it says are boats used to smuggle drugs into the United States.
The Army of announced on Wednesday (31) that eight people died in attacks against three vessels allegedly used by drug trafficking in international waters, bringing to at least 115 the number of deaths in an offensive that, according to Washington, combats the transport of narcotics.
On Tuesday, “three drug trafficking vessels traveling in convoy” were attacked in “international waters”, he said in a statement on X. “Three narco-terrorists on board the first vessel were shot down in the first confrontation. The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels, jumping over the edge and moving away before subsequent confrontations sank their respective vessels”, he said.
Along with the official statement, published on the X network, a video showed three boats sailing together in the sea. Then a series of explosions hit them. The command did not present evidence that they were drug traffickers. The exact location of the attacks was not immediately known. Previous attacks have occurred in the Caribbean or the Eastern Pacific.
On Dec. 31, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on two vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and…
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom)
The Army said it had notified the Coast Guard to “activate the Search and Rescue system,” without offering further details about the fate of those aboard the other boats. Hours later, Southern Command issued a second statement about attacks against two other vessels carried out on Wednesday, in which five people died. Again, it was unclear where the attacks occurred.
Since September, the US Army has carried out more than 30 such attacks against what it says are boats used to smuggle drugs into the United States, without providing any concrete evidence that the vessels attacked were involved in drug trafficking.
*With information from AFP
