The US military on Sunday struck a go-fast vessel in the Caribbean Sea, killing four individuals it called “narco-terrorists”.The “lethal kinetic” strike was executed by the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere under the direction of US Southern Command, Southcom said on X.“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking”, it said, “The operation killed four narco-terrorists”More than 220 people have died in the US strikes on such vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, Reuters reported.Since September 2025, the US administration has been targeting such vessels over allegations of smuggling narcotics in the country.In 2025, the Associated Press reported a Trump administration memo saying the US was in an “armed conflict” with the drug cartels.“The President determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” the memo says. Trump directed the Pentagon to “conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict,” the memo said, according to AP.“The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations,” it said.However, the legality of such strikes has been questioned by experts and rights advocates in the US and abroad.Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and a number of independent UN experts have condemned the strikes as unlawful extrajudicial killings.Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the attacks amount to crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law. Reuters reported.The American Civil Liberties Union has also rejected the Trump administration’s justifications for targeting these individuals, calling them “unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims.”
