US strike on Pacific vessel kills two as anti-cartel campaign tops 210 deaths

Washington,UPDATED: Aug 24, 2026 20:18 IST

The US military said it had struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people it accused of drug trafficking, in the first such attack announced in about two months. The Pentagon said the latest action has pushed the death toll in its nearly year-long campaign of bombing suspected drug-trafficking boats to more than 210, after over 60 strikes in the eastern Pacific and off Latin America's Caribbean coast.

The strike comes as the Trump administration seeks agreements with allied countries to extend the offensive on to land in parts of Latin America. At the same time, critics have questioned the legality and effectiveness of the boat attacks, while the Pentagon's watchdog is examining whether the military followed its targeting process.

US Southern Command said on social media that forces "executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narcotrafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific". As with most of the military's statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon did not provide evidence that the vessel was carrying drugs. It was the first strike since the back-to-back June 24 earthquakes that killed thousands of people.

"We are committed to imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists -- disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership, and eliminating cartel terror across the region," said Gen Francis Donovan, who leads US Southern Command.

The latest strike came as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to Panama this month that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow the US to carry out joint military operations against criminal groups on their soil. Guatemala denied reaching such a deal. Ecuador launched similar missions with the US in March.

President Donald Trump has said the US is in "armed conflict" with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and fatal overdoses claiming American lives. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing "narcoterrorists".

Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, partly because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India. The strikes, which began in early September, have drawn scrutiny from some Democratic lawmakers and military legal scholars.

In May, the Pentagon's watchdog said it planned to look into whether the US military followed the established six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle when carrying out the strikes, but said the review would not cover the legality of the attacks. The latest eastern Pacific strike has again brought the scale of the campaign, plans to widen it and the questions around it into focus.

With PTI Inputs

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