vessel in the eastern Pacific<\/a>, killing two people, in the latest deadly strike by US forces on boats that Washington alleges have links to Latin American drug trafficking cartels.<\/p>\nUS Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is responsible for Washington\u2019s military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, confirmed the attack in a post on social media late on Monday, claiming to have killed two \u201cmale narco-terrorists\u201d, without providing any evidence.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
SOUTHCOM claimed that, based on intelligence reports, the boat was \u201c\u2060transiting along known narco-trafficking routes \u2060in the \u2060Eastern Pacific\u201d and was targeted with \u201ca lethal kinetic strike\u201d on the orders of US Commander General Francis L Donovan.<\/p>\n
A grainy video clip released with the statement shows a stationary boat with outboard engines and what appear to be floats from fishing nets nearby. The boat comes under attack from the air and explodes into flames.<\/p>\n
The attack marked the second day in a row that SOUTHCOM announced a deadly strike on boats in the Pacific. On Sunday, the US military said it blew up two boats in the eastern Pacific a day earlier, killing five people and leaving one survivor. It was not immediately clear what happened to the person who survived the attack, though SOUTHCOM said the US coastguard was notified.<\/p>\n
With the attack on Monday, the US military has now killed at least 170 people in dozens of strikes on vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Ocean since September.<\/p>\n
International law experts, human rights groups and regional governments have accused the administration of US President Donald Trump of carrying out extrajudicial killings in international waters, which have likely targeted civilians, often fishing crews, who do not pose an immediate threat to the US.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration claims that such attacks are part of its war on drug trafficking cartels in Latin America, but has provided no solid evidence that any of the vessels targeted since last year have been involved in drug trafficking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latest attack brings death toll from US strikes on vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean to at least…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,28698,83471,2605,3075,3140,4379,3,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-582925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-crimes-against-humanity","10":"tag-drone-strikes","11":"tag-drugs","12":"tag-human-rights","13":"tag-latin-america","14":"tag-military","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-us-canada","22":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582925","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=582925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}