US military says at least eight killed in new strikes on alleged drug boats, with survivors abandoning ship

By Michael Williams, Zachary Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — US military strikes against alleged drug boats have killed at least eight people over the past two days – the latest salvos in the United States’ escalating actions against what it says are drug traffickers.

On New Year’s Eve, US Southern Command said the military struck two boats “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” killing five people.

The day before, Tuesday, the US struck what it described as a “convoy” of three boats participating in the trafficking of narcotics, SOUTHCOM announced in a post to X on Wednesday. Three people aboard one boat were killed, while those in the other two abandoned their vessel.

SOUTHCOM said it notified the US Coast Guard after Tuesday’s strike to activate search and rescue efforts. It’s unclear whether any survivors have been recovered.

“The U.S. Coast Guard is coordinating search and rescue operations with vessels in the area,” a USCG spokesperson said in a statement, adding that “a Coast Guard C-130 aircraft is en route to provide further search coverage with the ability to drop a survival raft and supplies.”

The announcement of the latest US strikes offered no details about where they occurred – not even a body of water – as has been the case in the past. The military only said the Tuesday strikes occurred in “international waters.”

Earlier this week, on Monday, the US military said it struck a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people on board. That brings the total from three days of strikes this week to 10 people killed and six boats sunk, according to SOUTHCOM’s information.

US strikes were first concentrated in the Caribbean Sea but the focus was later shifted to the eastern Pacific Ocean because administration officials believed they had stronger evidence linking cocaine transport to the US from those western routes, CNN previously reported.

CNN has reached out to Southern Command regarding the search and rescue mission for any survivors of Tuesday’s strikes.

The Pentagon has rarely been proactive in acknowledging the survivors of prior strikes and military officials have come under intense scrutiny for their handling of those cases.

The most controversial was the first known strike against an alleged drug boat on September 2, in which CNN reported that US forces carried out a “follow-on strike” killing two survivors of the initial blast.

That revelation has prompted allegations of a possible war crime with some lawmakers demanding answers from the commander in charge.

In a subsequent strike, survivors were briefly detained aboard a US Navy ship before they were repatriated back to their home countries. In a third strike, the Pentagon contacted Mexican officials and tasked them with leading a search and rescue mission for one survivor who was never located. That individual is now presumed dead.

The new strikes bring the total number of vessels targeted by the US to at least 36 and the number of fatalities to at least 115 since the US began its campaign in September.

The Trump administration has claimed it is carrying out the strikes to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, but administration officials have also suggested they are part of a pressure campaign aimed at ousting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, from whose country many of the stricken vessels have originated.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in interviews for a story published earlier this month that Trump wants to keep targeting boats until Maduro “cries uncle.”

Last week President Donald Trump said the United States took out a “big facility” as part of a pressure campaign against Venezuela that has included a massive US naval and troop buildup in the Caribbean and a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers, in addition to the strikes.

The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, marking the first known US attack on a target inside that country.

Trump, who has provided few additional details on the “big facility” action, told reporters on Monday that “there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs” and that an “implementation area” was “no longer around.”

Maduro has repeatedly criticized the US military deployment in the Caribbean and accused the US of waging a campaign of “psychological terrorism” against his country.

In a response to Trump ordering a “complete” blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela earlier this month, Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a law last week that allows for prison terms of up to 20 years for anyone found supporting “piracy” or “blockades.”

This headline and story has been updated with Wednesday’s strike.

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