US strike on alleged drug boat kills three in eastern Pacific

The US military said on Saturday it had carried out a strike on a vessel in the Eastern Pacific killing three men, the second strike in as many days.Officials with the US Southern Command said in a post on X that intelligence had confirmed that the vessel was transiting along “narco-trafficking” routes in the Eastern Pacific and engaged in “narco-trafficking” operations.“Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action,” the post said. “No US military forces were harmed.”On Friday, the US military said it carried out another strike on a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. That attacked killed three men as well, pushing the over death toll in such strikes by the US over the last several months to more than 200 people.Friday’s and Saturday’s strikes were among four over the previous week.The Trump administration has declared that the US is at armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, accusing them of flooding the nation’s communities with drugs. But the White House has not provided definitive evidence that the vessels are involved in drug trafficking, prompting debate about the legality of strikes such as the ones carried out on Friday and Saturday.Experts and human rights advocates have challenged the strikes’ legality, with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International saying the operations amount to “unlawful extrajudicial killings”.