On Tuesday (30), the US military attacked what it described as a “convoy” of three boats involved in narcotics trafficking — the latest action by US authorities against what they say are drug traffickers.
Authorities reported that three people died on one of the target boats, while the remaining occupants of the other two boats abandoned the vessels, according to a statement from US Southern Command published in X on Wednesday (31).
It is still unclear where the attacks took place. The army only described that the attacks took place in “international waters”. Previous attacks have occurred in both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
Wednesday’s announcement of the latest U.S. strike did not provide details about the location, or even the body of water, as has been the case in past actions.
The U.S. strikes initially focused on the Caribbean Sea, but the focus was later shifted to the Eastern Pacific as administration officials believed they had stronger evidence linking cocaine transport into the U.S. to these western routes, as previously reported by CNN.
A CNN contacted the Coast Guard about the search and rescue mission for survivors.
The Pentagon has rarely been proactive in recognizing survivors of past attacks, and military officials have faced intense scrutiny for their handling of these cases.
The acquaintance against an alleged drug boat on September 2, in which the CNN reported that US forces carried out a “follow-up attack”, killing two survivors of the initial explosion.
That revelation sparked allegations of a possible war crime, with some lawmakers demanding answers from the commander responsible.
In a subsequent attack, survivors were briefly detained aboard a US Navy ship before being repatriated back to their home countries. In a third attack, the Pentagon contacted Mexican authorities and tasked them with leading a search and rescue mission for a survivor who was never located. That individual is now considered dead.
The new attacks bring the total number of vessels hit by the US to at least 34 and the number of fatalities to at least 110 since the start of the US campaign in September.
The Trump administration has said it is carrying out the strikes to disrupt the flow of drugs into the United States, but administration officials have also suggested that these strikes are part of a pressure campaign to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, from whose country many of the struck vessels originated.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in interviews for a story published earlier this month that Trump wants to keep hitting boats until Maduro “screams ‘enough’.”
Last week, President Donald Trump said the United States destroyed a “major facility” as part of a pressure campaign against Venezuela that included a major increase in the U.S. naval and troop presence in the Caribbean and a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers in addition to the attacks.
The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month against a port facility off the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNNmarking the first known U.S. attack on a target within that country.
Trump, who provided few additional details about the action at the “large facility,” told reporters on Monday that “there was a big explosion in the dock area where they load the boats with drugs” and that a “deployment area” “doesn’t exist anymore.”
Maduro has repeatedly criticized the US military deployment in the Caribbean and accused the United States of waging a campaign of “psychological terrorism” against his country.
In response to being ordered in and out of Venezuela earlier this month, Venezuela’s National Assembly last week approved a law providing prison sentences of up to 20 years for anyone found guilty of supporting “piracy” or “blockades.”
