Overview
- U.S. Southern Command reported hitting a vessel on a known trafficking route in the Caribbean and shared a video of the explosion on X.
- The command said three people were killed, though some reports describe conflicting casualty counts of two or three.
- Since September, U.S. forces have conducted 38 such maritime strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific with at least 133 reported deaths.
- President Donald Trump has described the effort as an armed conflict with cartels, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed some cartel leaders paused activities without providing evidence.
- Critics denounce the operations as extrajudicial and potentially unlawful under international law, with scrutiny intensified by the earlier reported U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, now held in New York on drug‑terrorism charges.