The Defense Department said on Sunday that it had blown up a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean earlier in the day, killing six people. The strike raised the death toll in the campaign by the United States against people it accuses of smuggling drugs at sea to at least 156.
The U.S. Southern Command announced the strike on social media with an 11-second video clip that showed a stationary boat, with two or three outboard engines, floating in the water and then suddenly exploding.
Legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if suspected of engaging in criminal acts. The Trump administration has not provided evidence of drug smuggling.
The Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean from headquarters near Miami, cited unspecified intelligence in the announcement. It said the boat had been traveling on “known narco-trafficking routes” and was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”
The attack, the 45th since the U.S. campaign against the boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific started in early September, continued a recent increase in the pace of strikes. The six people killed on Sunday marked one of the deadliest boat strikes that the military has carried out in recent weeks.
The U.S. military has carried out strikes every three or four days since the new leader of the Southern Command, Gen. Francis L. Donovan of the Marine Corps, took over in January.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
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