Aug. 25 (UPI) — The U.S. military killed four people Tuesday in its latest strike targeting an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, the second strike in a matter of days after a two-month pause.
U.S. Southern Command has killed at least 227 people in 68 publicly acknowledged strikes targeting alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since the first strike on Sept. 2, according to UPI’s tally, which is based on SOUTHCOM press releases.
As with previous strikes, SOUTHCOM said intelligence confirmed the boat it struck Tuesday was involved in narco-trafficking and that it was “operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean.”
As it has done with previous strikes, SOUTHCOM did not provide proof.
A seven-second aerial video of the strike published online by SOUTHCOM shows a boat driving along the water before it is enveloped in a flash.
“We will hunt, disrupt and defeat these narco-terrorist networks,” Gen. Francis Donovan, commander of SOUTHCOM, said Tuesday in a statement.
“SOUTHCOM is resolved to neutralizing cartel terror and violence throughout the region and into the U.S. homeland.”
Earlier this month, SOUTHCOM replaced Joint Task Force Southern Spear, which had carried out Operation Southern Spear, with the broader Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, a new command intended to provide unified command and control at the tactical and operational levels while integrating military capabilities with 18 partner nations of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, according to the Defense Department.
The Trump administration has said the task force’s purpose is to “synchronize” U.S. military operations with Caribbean and Latin American allies, such as Trinidad and Tobago.
Tuesday’s strike was the second by the joint task force after it killed two people SOUTHCOM accused of being narco-terrorists on Sunday.
The Sunday strike was the first since June 21. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data conflict monitor told UPI in an emailed statement that Sunday’s strike ended the longest interruption in U.S. strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels since the campaign began.
The cause of the lapse was not immediately clear and UPI has contacted SOUTHCOM for an explanation.
The strikes have been widely criticized by legal and civil rights advocates as well as United Nations experts as illegal extrajudicial killings under international law. The Trump administration has argued that it is in “armed conflict” with the drug cartels, though a Justice Department legal memo justifying the strikes against people allegedly affiliated with a secret list of designated groups remains classified.
Despite the Trump administration’s claims that all those killed are narco-terrorists, evidence suggests that at least some of them were fishermen. A lawsuit filed against the U.S. government by the American Civil Liberties Union states that two people killed in the same strike in September were returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago after working as farmers and fishermen in Venezuela.
Earlier this month, Sen. Tim Kaine echoed this sentiment after reviewing classified documents on the operation.
In a letter to Trump, the senior Democratic lawmaker from Virginia and a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees urged him to examine whether military leaders had exceeded his order by targeting people the Justice Department did not say in its memo could be legally targeted and killed.