U.S. military kills four in 71st Caribbean drug-boat strike

U.N. expert says strikes may constitute crimes against humanity

U.S. Southern Command announced late Sunday that the military had killed four people in a strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, the 71st publicly acknowledged strike in a 13-month campaign that has killed at least 238 people and drawn accusations of extrajudicial killings from international legal experts.

The strike is the campaign’s first since Ben Saul, the United Nations’ independent special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, concluded in a Sept. 20 briefing note that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the attacks constitute the crime against humanity of murder under customary international law, amounting to “serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life.”

Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, operating under Southern Command direction, carried out what SOUTHCOM called a “lethal, kinetic strike” on “a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean.” According to a SOUTHCOM statement, “confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking.” The operation killed what SOUTHCOM described as “four narco-terrorists.”

Black-and-white aerial video shared online by SOUTHCOM shows a vessel moving across the water before a projectile strikes it, causing smoke and flames. Little additional information about the strike was made public.

The Trump administration has justified the strikes as part of an “armed conflict” against Latin American drug cartels and gangs, a framing that international legal experts have disputed. President Donald Trump has designated 21 such organizations as both foreign terrorist organizations and global terrorists. While the designations carry immigration and financial penalties, including sanctions, they do not provide a legal framework for the strikes; the administration has argued the labels bolster its case that the military is combating terrorism.

Families have said some of those killed were not involved in drug trafficking and were fishermen or farmers. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a case against the Trump administration, accusing it of killing two men who were returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago after working on farms in Venezuela.

Since the strikes began in early September 2025, the Trump administration has been accused by critics and Democrats of using the military to conduct law enforcement operations and committing extrajudicial killings of people who have not been charged, tried, or convicted.

Saul, who has been among those calling on the Trump administration to cease its attacks, said in his September briefing note that even if those killed were members of criminal organizations listed as terrorists, the organizations have not mounted any armed attack on the United States that would trigger a right to this form of self-defense, while U.S. deaths from illicit drugs “are not assimilable to an armed attack under international law.”

He also said there is growing evidence that the attacks have “not been effective in reducing drug trafficking in the United States” and that the attacks have focused on cocaine rather than fentanyl and opioids, which are the primary causes of U.S. overdose deaths.

“Moreover, in killing low-level, ‘replaceable’ suspects, the attacks have thwarted evidence gathering on cartel structures, which would facilitate their systemic disruption, asset seizures and the prosecution of their leaders,” Saul wrote.

According to Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, U.S. military operations associated with the campaign cost an estimated $4.7 billion through March 31.