President Donald Trump’s administration announced that the United States recently attacked a boat in international waters, killing two people in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Friday’s attack brings the total number of bombings since President Trump began campaigning on September 2nd to at least 36. An estimated 125 people died in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, including two recent casualties.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
U.S. Southern Command, the military unit that oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean, reported that one survivor had not yet been recovered. It added that the US Coast Guard has been notified to begin search and rescue operations.
“On January 23, at the direction of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a deadly kinetic attack on a vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization,” the command wrote in a social media post.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was sailing along known drug trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and was engaged in drug trafficking operations.”
This deadly attack was the first of its kind in 2026, with the last attack taking place on December 31st.
This is also the first development since the United States launched a full-scale military operation in Venezuela on January 3 to remove then-president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Syria Flores. The couple is currently being held in a federal prison in Brooklyn, New York on drug trafficking charges.
President Trump’s increasingly aggressive actions in the Latin American region have sparked alarm among world leaders and human rights activists, who have compared the boat bombings to extrajudicial killings.
The unknown fate of the survivors
The treatment of survivors during such strikes has also raised concerns.
One survivor of the October 27 attack went missing in the waves and is presumed dead. And during the December 30 attack, Confederate command reported that eight survivors “abandoned ship” and jumped into the sea before their boats sank in a second attack.
Despite efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard, the men were never found.
One of the biggest controversies occurred in late November, when the Washington Post revealed that the first of the series’ attacks on September 2 had left two previously unknown survivors.
These survivors were killed by additional “double tap” attacks while clinging to the wreckage of the boat.
Lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum have denounced the “double tap” as a possible crime, and pressure is mounting on the Trump administration to release the video depicting the second attack to the public.
This is the only rare case in which survivors have been rescued from a deadly boat attack by the Trump administration.
On October 16, the U.S. military targeted the submarine for bombing. Two survivors, one from Ecuador and one from Colombia, were repatriated to their home countries. Both men were reportedly released from custody without charge, as authorities said there was insufficient evidence to detain them.
legal basis is questionable
The Trump administration has repeatedly accused those aboard the ship of being drug traffickers, but has never provided evidence to justify its claims.
In October, media reports said the White House notified Congress that the president had determined the United States was in an “armed conflict” with drug traffickers, calling them “illegal combatants.”
Drug trafficking is a crime under international law, but it is not an act of armed aggression.
Experts including the United Nations have warned that the killing could amount to an international crime, as there is no forum to weigh the evidence and establish guilt.
“These attacks appear to be unlawful killings carried out at the behest of the government, without any judicial or legal process that would allow for due process of law,” the U.N. group of experts said in a statement in November.
It added that the bombing campaign violated “fundamental international human rights law prohibiting the arbitrary deprivation of life” because the attack was not carried out “within the context of national self-defense” and against “individuals posing an imminent threat.”
U.S. groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to release confidential opinions from the Justice Department’s Office of General Counsel that it uses to justify attacks. However, that lawsuit is still ongoing.
The United States is also facing questions about its airstrikes methods after the New York Times reported this month that the plane was disguised as a civilian plane in the Sept. 2 attack.
The report says it could explain why the survivors appeared to wave for help before being killed by Double Tap. Under international law, such deception could be considered a “fraud,” or a serious war crime.
The US has so far not announced any casualties, raising further concerns.
Families from countries such as Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago say their loved ones were among those killed, and many say the dead were simply fishermen, not drug traffickers.
In December, the family of missing fisherman Alejandro Carranza filed the first international complaint over a U.S. ship strike.
The group appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to halt the bombing, investigate the situation and seek compensation on behalf of the families.
