WASHINGTON (AP) — The US military said Wednesday that it struck three other boats that were allegedly smuggling drugs, killing three people while others jumped overboard and may have survived.
The statement from the US Southern Command, which oversees South America, did not reveal where the attacks took place. Previous attacks were in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
A video posted by the Southern Command on social media shows the boats traveling in close formation, which is unusual, and the military said they were in convoy along known drug trafficking routes and “had transferred narcotics between the three vessels before the attacks.” The military did not provide evidence to support the claim.
The military said that three people were killed when the first boat was hit, while the people in the other two boats jumped into the sea and got away from the vessels before they were attacked. Southern Command said it immediately notified the US Coast Guard to activate search and rescue efforts.
The attacks happened on Tuesday. The statement of the Southern Command does not say whether those who jumped from the boats were saved.
The Coast Guard call is notable because the US military has come under intense scrutiny after US forces killed the survivors of an attack in early September in a follow-up attack on their disabled boat. Some Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the military committed a crime, while the Trump administration and some Republican lawmakers said the follow-up strike was legal.
The latest attacks bring the total number of known boat attacks to 33 and the number of people killed to at least 110 since the beginning of September, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to curb the flow of drugs in the United States and claimed that the United States is involved in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
Along with the strikes, the Trump administration has built up military forces in the region as part of an escalating pressure campaign on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been accused of narco-terrorism in the United States.
Meanwhile, the CIA was behind a drone strike last week on a docking area believed to be used by Venezuelan drug cartels, according to two people familiar with details of the operation who requested anonymity to discuss the classified matter.
It was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the United States began the strikes in September, a significant escalation in the administration’s pressure campaign on the Maduro government.