The U.S. military struck and destroyed a vessel suspected of drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, killing three people aboard, the latest action in the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign against what it calls narco-terrorism in Latin America.
U.S. Southern Command confirmed the strike, saying forces targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The command did not release the location or identify the nationality of those killed.
A video posted on X showed a boat speeding through the water before being hit and bursting into flames.
Thursday’s strike brings the total number of people killed in U.S. military boat strikes to at least 211 since the Trump administration launched the campaign in early September 2025.
President Donald Trump has characterized the operations as a necessary military escalation against criminal organizations moving drugs into the United States. “We are in armed conflict with the cartels,” Trump said earlier this year. “We are going to destroy them.”
The administration has framed the campaign as a response to the fentanyl crisis, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans annually. Trump officials argue that disrupting smuggling networks at sea reduces the flow of narcotics before they reach U.S. soil.
Senate Armed Services Committee members on Thursday sent a letter to the Pentagon demanding the release of “unedited video” of the strikes, according to sources familiar with the request. Lawmakers have pressed the Defense Department repeatedly in recent months for more transparency about the operations.
The strikes have drawn scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers and military legal scholars who have questioned both the legality of targeting vessels on the open ocean and the effectiveness of the campaign. Critics have noted that fentanyl is typically trafficked overland from Mexico, not by sea, and that the military has provided little evidence the targeted vessels were actually carrying drugs.
U.S. Southern Command stated in each case that targeted vessels were traveling along established smuggling routes, but the military has not released documentary evidence of drugs aboard most of the boats struck.
The Pentagon’s inspector general announced in May it would review whether the military followed an established targeting framework, known as the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle, in carrying out the strikes. The IG said the review is focused on procedural compliance, not the legal basis for the campaign itself.
One earlier incident drew particular concern from lawmakers. In that case, two men survived an initial strike that killed nine others. The survivors were clinging to wreckage when the vessel was hit a second time, killing them. The White House defended the follow-up strike, saying it was carried out “in self-defense” to ensure the destruction of the vessel and was consistent with the laws of armed conflict. Several military legal scholars disputed that justification.
