Overview
- The Pentagon said it hit another small vessel in the Eastern Pacific, killing three people and marking the 55th strike since September with a total of at least 186 dead.
- U.S. Southern Command described Friday’s separate strike in the Eastern Pacific that killed two as targeting a boat on known smuggling routes, and it reported no U.S. casualties.
- The administration told Congress it treats the effort as an armed conflict with drug cartels and relies on a classified Justice Department finding to carry out lethal strikes without court review.
- Rights groups and legal experts call the killings extrajudicial, and the Pentagon has not released identities of the dead or public evidence that drugs were on the boats.
- Coast Guard searches after multiple strikes have found a small number of survivors and left others presumed dead, and bipartisan critics in Congress are pressing for more evidence and oversight.