MEXICO CITY — The Trump administration has widened its war on alleged drug boats, announcing that it had attacked four vessels off what Mexico said was its Pacific coast, a move condemned by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
The Pentagon said 14 people were killed in several strikes carried out Monday in international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. One survivor was rescued by Mexico’s navy, according to the Pentagon and Sheinbaum.
At her daily news conference Tuesday morning, Sheinbaum denounced the attacks and said she had asked Mexico’s ambassador to the United States to address them with officials in Washington.
“We do not agree with these attacks, with how they are carried out,” Sheinbaum said. “We want all international treaties to be complied with.”
The Pentagon did not give exact geographic coordinates of the attacks. In a post on X, Mexico’s navy said that at the behest of the U.S. Coast Guard, it conducted a search-and-rescue operation 400 miles south of the Pacific resort city of Acapulco.
The latest strikes mark a new theater in the U.S. military campaign against alleged drug traffickers. In recent months, the military has massed thousands of troops, war ships and fighter jets in the Caribbean ocean to combat drug traffickers, which White House officials have branded “narco terrorists.”
At least 57 people have been killed in a series of U.S. strikes on supposed traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many experts say the strikes violate U.S. and international law.
The strikes have provoked outcry throughout Latin America. After Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the U.S. for “murdering” Colombian civilians in strikes off the coast of his country, the U.S. Treasury Department responded by sanctioning him and several members of his family.
U.S. officials have been warning for months that they may carry out strikes on drug trafficking targets in Mexico. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said that she opposes unilateral U.S. military action in her nation and that Mexico would treat such a strike as an act of war.
But with her government currently locked in negotiations with the White House over President Trump’s aim to increase tariffs on Mexican imports, Sheinbaum has had to tread carefully. On Monday, she said that she spoke with Trump over the weekend and that the U.S. had agreed to give Mexico more time to make trade policy changes to avoid an increase in tariffs that had been set to go into effect this week.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted footage of Monday’s strikes to social media in which two boats can be seen moving at speed through the water. One is visibly laden with a large amount of parcels or bundles. Both then suddenly explode and are seen aflame.
The third strike appears to have been conducted on a pair of boats that were stationary in the water alongside each other. They appear to be largely empty with at least two people seen moving before an explosion engulfs both boats.
Hegseth said “the four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics.”
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