US strikes a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing 2 people in first attack in months ⛵
August 24, 2026 - The Guardian
After a pause of more than two months, the US military announced Monday that it once again carried out a strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of trafficking drugs.
It brings the overall death toll to 223 people killed in 67 strikes during the nearly year-long US campaign of bombing alleged drug boats off Latin America’s Caribbean coast and in the eastern Pacific Ocean. US Southern Command says the campaign has resulted in the destruction of 64 speedboats, three “low-profile” ships and a semisubmersible craft.
The command said on social media early Monday that forces “executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narcotrafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific”. The military said the strike occurred Sunday, and it marked the first since powerful back-to-back 24 June earthquakes in Venezuela killed thousands of people.
As with most of the military’s statements, Southern Command did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs.
“We are committed to imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists – disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership, and eliminating cartel terror across the region,” said Gen Francis Donovan, who leads US Southern Command.
The latest strike comes as the Trump administration pursues deals with allied nations to extend its offensive to land across multiple Latin American countries. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to Panama this month that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow the US to carry out joint military operations against criminal groups on their soil. Guatemala denied reaching such a deal.
Ecuador launched similar missions with the US in March.
The Trump administration’s boat bombing campaign began in early September and has left numerous survivors, but most of them have never been recovered.
US Southern Command said in a separate statement on Monday that there have been more than 20 search and rescue efforts overall, almost all of which were unsuccessful.
According to data compiled from the command’s social media posts, the strikes have generated 28 survivors with only three people ever being rescued – one person during a strike in March who was transferred to the Costa Rican Coast Guard, and two wounded people who were later repatriated to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
The very first strike in September 2025 left two survivors who were killed in a second, follow-up strike. When that became public, it drew concern from some lawmakers and those who study military law. The White House insisted it was done “in self-defense” to ensure the boat was destroyed and in accordance with armed conflict laws.
But some legal scholars said a second strike killing survivors would have been illegal under any circumstance, armed conflict or not.
Donald Trump has said the US is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and fatal overdoses claiming American lives. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists”.
Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
The Pentagon’s watchdog said in May that it plans to look into whether the US military followed an established targeting framework when carrying out the strikes. However, the evaluation is focused specifically on what’s known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and not on the legality of the strikes, the inspector general’s office said.
Meanwhile, an investigation by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (Clip) this year identified 13 previously unidentified victims of US vessel attacks. All came from impoverished communities across Latin America and the Caribbean and several were fishers with no indication of involvement in the drug trade, it found.
“There are communities where they stopped fishing for several weeks – and if they do that, people go hungry – because they were terrified of being bombed,” María Teresa Ronderos, Clip director, said at the time of the report’s release.
Other families continue to grieve as they seek answers about their relatives killed in US airstrikes.
“If the boat was carrying so much cocaine and then exploded and caught fire, where is the evidence? Where is the cocaine? That is what I want to know. I know Ricky. He was a fisherman. That was his life,” Titus, the brother of Ricky Joseph, one of the 13 people identified in the CLIP investigation, said in June from the Carribean island of St Lucia.
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