April 12, 2026 / 10:07 PM EDT / CBS/AFP
The U.S. military said Sunday it killed five people and left one survivor in strikes on two boats it alleges were trafficking drugs in the eastern Pacific, bringing the campaign’s reported death toll to at least 168.
Southern Command said the strikes occurred April 11 and posted aerial video of the attacks. It described the vessels as “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes” and identified the dead as “male narco-terrorists,” saying one “narco-terrorist survived the first strike” and three were killed in the second. The announcement did not provide publicly available evidence of drug-trafficking ties.
Afterward, Southern Command said it notified the U.S. Coast Guard to conduct a search and rescue for the survivor; there was no immediate update on that search.
The U.S. began striking alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific last September. In at least six prior incidents people survived initial strikes, prompting searches; authorities have called off some searches, while in an October case two survivors were recovered by a Navy helicopter and repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia.
The military’s handling of survivors has drawn intense scrutiny. In the first strike on Sept. 2, two people who survived an initial hit were killed in a follow-up attack, raising accusations that the second strike could amount to a war crime. Lawmakers who viewed video of that operation criticized it, while the Defense Department and some congressional Republicans argued follow-on strikes were justified because survivors might still have posed a threat.
The Trump administration says the strikes are necessary to combat narcotics trafficking and has labeled alleged smugglers “unlawful combatants,” telling Congress the U.S. is engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with cartels. Families of two Trinidadian men killed in a U.S. missile strike in the Caribbean have sued the administration, arguing the killings lacked legal justification.