The U.S. military said on Sunday it carried out a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, killing two people it identified only as “male narco-terrorists” linked to unnamed “designated terrorist organizations.”
U.S. Southern Command said the operation left six survivors and caused no harm to U.S. forces. It said the Coast Guard had been alerted to search for and rescue those who survived the strike. The command said intelligence had confirmed the vessel was traveling a known drug-trafficking route and was engaged in trafficking activity at the time it was hit.
The strike is the latest in a sustained U.S. military campaign, known as Operation Southern Spear, targeting suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The campaign began in September 2025 and has expanded steadily since, with U.S. officials saying more than 50 strikes have killed at least 190 people.
Washington has not made public the evidence underpinning its claims that those killed were trafficking drugs or tied to designated terrorist groups such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua or Colombia’s National Liberation Army. Human rights organizations have characterized the strikes as extrajudicial killings, and family members and foreign governments have said some victims were fishermen with no connection to trafficking. The Trump administration has defended the operations, saying they are necessary to curb the flow of narcotics into the United States, and officials have said their intelligence assessments consistently identify the targets as narco-traffickers.
