US military strikes suspected drug boat in Caribbean, killing 4

The U.S. military killed four people in a strike Tuesday against an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea.

The death toll from the Trump administration’s nearly year-long campaign to stop alleged traffickers in Latin America has reached at least 227 after 68 strikes.

“Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere continues executing precise, lethal operations against the cartels,” Gen. Francis Donovan, who leads U.S. Southern Command, said in a news release. “We will hunt, disrupt, and defeat these narco-terrorist networks.”

SOUTHCOM didn’t provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs but said that “confirmed intelligence” revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narcotrafficking.

A seven-second video showed what appeared to be a moving boat before being struck.

Tuesday’s strike came two days after the U.S. military carried out a strike on an alleged drug vessel in the Eastern Pacific that killed two people.

These are the first reported strikes in the region in two months.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week during a visit to Panama that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow the U.S. to carry out joint military operations against criminal groups on their soil.

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”