US military kills 2 people in attack on boat in Pacific

By ERIC SCHMITT

The U.S. military killed two men in a strike against a boat in the eastern Pacific that it said was transporting narcotics, U.S. Southern Command announced early Monday. It was the first such strike by the military since June 21.

The United States began a campaign of boat strikes last year in the run-up to the military operation that seized Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. The military has continued the operations in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing at least 223 people in 67 strikes that it said were involved in the narcotics trade.

But narcotics experts say the boat strikes have failed to slow the smuggling of cocaine from South America to the United States. According to Brown University, the costs of the operation were at $4.7 billion as of March 31.

Legal specialists also have said the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence.

Southern Command provided little detail about the strike that took place Sunday but noted that intelligence reports said the vessel was trafficking narcotics and traveling on a route used by drug smugglers.

“Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific,” Southern Command said in a statement, referring to a new military unit set up to expand the Pentagon’s war against drugs in cooperation with regional allies.

Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of Southern Command, said in the statement on social media announcing the strike: “When I ordered the establishment of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, it was precisely for this purpose: to accelerate, synchronize, and execute lethal actions against these destabilizing narco-terrorist networks.”