By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. military said on Wednesday three people were killed in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, the latest in a series of attacks that Washington says target “narco-terrorists” but human rights groups condemn as extrajudicial killings.
DETAILS:
• U.S. Southern Command said on X it “executed a lethal kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean.”
• It cited “confirmed intelligence” to allege the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking, without providing more details.
• The U.S. military said three people, whom it called “narco-terrorists,” were killed.
• President Donald Trump’s administration has said the vessels it has struck since September 2025 were transporting narcotics.
• The U.S. military’s strikes on such vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have killed more than 220 people.
• Experts and rights advocates, both in the U.S. and globally, have questioned the legality of the strikes.
• Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and independent U.N. experts have called the strikes unlawful extrajudicial killings.
• The American Civil Liberties Union has cast the assertions by the Trump administration against those it targets as “unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims.”
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Costas Pitas; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Jamie Freed)
