The Joint Task Force Southern Spear carried out a lethal kinetic strike on Sunday against a vessel traveling through known drug trafficking routes in the Caribbean, resulting in two men dead and six survivors, as confirmed by the United States Southern Command on their official account.
The attack was ordered by General Francis L. Donovan, commander of SOUTHCOM, and was carried out against a vessel that U.S. intelligence identified as operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations.
After the coup, Southern Command immediately notified the Coast Guard to activate the search and rescue system for the six survivors. No U.S. military personnel were injured.
"The intelligence confirmed that the vessel was navigating through known drug trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was involved in narcotics operations. Two male narcoterrorists were eliminated during this action, and there were six male survivors," the official statement indicated.
The declassified video released by SOUTHCOM shows images captured by infrared systems from a military aircraft, featuring an intense heat source in the center of the image and a trail of smoke extending from the impact—typical characteristics of the kinetic attacks that the operation has carried out since its inception.
This is the third recorded attack in June. On June 16, the Southern Command attacked another drug smuggling boat resulting in one dead and two survivors, and on June 3 took down another vessel in the Pacific with two fatalities.
The Operation Southern Lance was officially announced in November 2025 by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth under the Trump administration, as part of a strategy to curb maritime drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The operation targets groups such as the Tren de Aragua and the ELN, designated as terrorist organizations by Washington.
Since its onset in September 2025, the death toll has steadily escalated: 85 in December of that year, over 197 in May 2026, and more than 206 according to figures from the AFP cited by international media prior to the attack this Sunday. With the two deaths on June 21, the total accumulated exceeds 208 fatalities in more than 60 attacks.
According to the quarterly report from SOUTHCOM to Congress, covering the period between September 2025 and March 2026, at least 47 vessels were attacked, with approximately one-third of the incidents concentrated in the Caribbean, the same area where the attack occurred this Sunday.
The operation has sparked an international debate on the use of extrajudicial lethal force in international waters against suspected civilian vessels, without prior legal proceedings.
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