{"id":512789,"date":"2026-03-09T10:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/512789\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T10:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:22:08","slug":"us-military-kills-6-in-strike-on-alleged-drug-boat-in-the-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/512789\/","title":{"rendered":"US military kills 6 in strike on alleged drug boat in the Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The U.S. military said it killed six men Sunday in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean as part of the Trump administration\u2019s campaign<\/a> against alleged traffickers. <\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls \u201cnarcoterrorists\u201d in small vessels in early September. <\/p>\n

As with most of the military\u2019s statements on the more than 40 known strikes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It posted a video on X that showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water. <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in \u201carmed conflict\u201d with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks<\/a> as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing \u201cnarcoterrorists.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a meeting with Latin American leaders<\/a> on Saturday, Trump encouraged them to join the U.S. in taking military action against drug-trafficking cartels and transnational gangs, which he said pose an \u201cunacceptable threat\u201d to the region\u2019s national security. <\/p>\n

To that end, Ecuador and the United States conducted military operations this past week against organized crime groups in the South American country. <\/p>\n

With Saturday\u2019s gathering, Trump aimed to demonstrate that he remains committed to focusing U.S. foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere, even while waging a war<\/a> on Iran that has had repercussions across the Middle East. <\/p>\n

Critics have questioned the overall legality<\/a> of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico<\/a>, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.<\/p>\n

The boat strikes also drew intense criticism<\/a> following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said<\/a> the killings were murder, if not a war crime. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The U.S. military said it killed six men Sunday in a strike on an alleged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[17235,23,1927,12,22048,4122,793,694,228242,1576,3,81,111,24265,21,792,19,22,20,25,24,800,965],"class_list":["post-512789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-activism","tag-america","tag-ap-top-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-drug-crimes","tag-ecuador","tag-general-news","tag-homicide","tag-iran-war","tag-military-and-defense","tag-news","tag-pacific-ocean","tag-politics","tag-terrorism","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}