US boat strike kills 2 in Pacific, with 1 survivor

WASHINGTON – A US military boat strike, the third in 2026, blew up a vessel suspected of carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Feb 9, killing two people and leaving a lone survivor, the Pentagon’s Southern Command said.

Southern Command, or Southcom, said that it had notified the US Coast Guard to begin search-and-rescue operations.

The strike was the second authorised by General Francis Donovan, a Marine who became Southcom’s new leader last week, overseeing US military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It was the 38th strike announced by the Trump administration in a campaign against drug trafficking from Latin America, particularly Venezuela and Colombia, which began in early September.

The campaign began with strikes in the Caribbean but has most often targeted vessels in the eastern Pacific, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times.

The strikes have now claimed 130 lives.

Since the campaign started, only two other people are known to have survived a US military air strike; they were eventually rescued.

A third person survived a strike on Jan 23, but was never found and is presumed dead.

An 11-second video clip accompanying Southcom’s announcement on Feb 9 showed the boat travelling across the water when two explosions set it on fire.

The announcement said that unspecified intelligence had determined that the boat was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and that it was following a known drug-smuggling route.

A broad range of legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said that the US strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if they are suspected of engaging in criminal acts. NYTIMES