April 14, 2026 / 8:53 PM EDT / CBS/AP
The U.S. military on Tuesday struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific that it says was carrying drugs, killing four people in the fourth such attack reported in recent days. U.S. Southern Command released aerial video that shows a boat bobbing in the water before it is struck by a projectile and explodes.
Southern Command said it struck two boats on Saturday and a third on Monday. Officials described all the vessels as “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” and said intelligence showed they “were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” but they did not provide evidence to support those assertions.
When asked about a separate strike in the eastern Pacific that killed two men on Monday, a Southern Command spokesperson told CBS News, “For operational security reasons, we cannot discuss specific sources or methods.”
The latest strike raises the reported death toll to 175 since the operations began in early September. The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended the search for one survivor from Saturday’s attack.
At least six people have survived strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats, prompting search-and-rescue efforts in most cases. Authorities later called off several searches, though in an October operation two survivors were rescued by a Navy helicopter and repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia.
During the first strike of the Trump administration’s campaign on Sept. 2, two people survived an initial attack only to be killed in a follow-on strike, a sequence that prompted accusations the second attack may have amounted to a war crime.
Critics have questioned both the legality and the effectiveness of the maritime strikes, noting that much of the fentanyl linked to fatal overdoses typically moves overland from Mexico, where it is produced using chemicals imported from China and India.
President Trump has said the United States is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has defended the attacks as necessary to stem the flow of drugs and reduce overdose deaths. His administration, however, has provided little public evidence to support its characterization of those killed as “narcoterrorists.”