The United States has announced it carried out three more attacks against boats accused of trafficking illegal narcotics in the waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 14 people and leaving one survivor.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the strikes on Tuesday morning in a post on the social media platform X, framing the attacks as a national security measure.
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“The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own,” Hegseth wrote.
But critics have called the bombing campaign a form of extrajudicial killing and a violation of international law.
In his post, Hegseth explained that all three air strikes had taken place on Monday. An accompanying video showed one missile striking two boats floating side by side, setting both aflame.
Eight men were aboard the pair of vessels during the first strike. A second attack targeted a small boat carrying four men, and a third hit another boat with three people.
It was not immediately clear which of the three attacks left a survivor. But Hegseth noted that Mexican authorities were leading search-and-rescue operations.
None of the victims were identified, nor was any evidence presented to the public to substantiate the allegations of drug trafficking.
Increasing attacks
The string of attacks on Monday marked the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day.
It was also the second time a survivor has been confirmed since the bombing campaign began on September 2.
On October 16, another strike reportedly left two survivors, both of whom were repatriated to their home countries.
One, identified in media reports as Andres Fernando Tufino, was released without charges in Ecuador. The other, Jeison Obando Perez, remains hospitalised in Colombia.
Monday’s strikes bring the total known death toll to 57. There have been at least 13 air strikes as part of the two-month-long campaign, with 14 maritime vessels targeted, most of them small boats.
But the pace of the attacks appears to be picking up. While the US bombed three vessels in September, it announced 10 more attacks this month.
The string of attacks on Monday means there have been six attacks in the span of a week, including on October 21, October 22, and overnight on October 24.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has argued that the recent bombing campaign is necessary to prevent illicit drugs from reaching US soil.
But human rights watchdogs and international experts have warned that the missile strikes violate international law, including the United Nations Charter.
Countries are largely prohibited from deploying lethal military action against non-combatants outside of a conflict. Critics have also pointed out that it is not clear whether the bombed boats were even headed to the US.
“We continue to emphasise the need for all efforts to counter transnational organised crime to be conducted in accordance with international law,” Miroslav Jenca, the UN’s assistant secretary-general for the Americas, told the UN Security Council this month.
But the Trump administration has increasingly labelled drug cartels in Latin America as “foreign terrorist organizations”.
In September, the US president issued a memo to Congress asserting that he considered drug traffickers “unlawful combatants” in a “non-international armed conflict”.
Legal experts have cast doubt on that rationale, howeve