The United States Southern Command carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a "go-fast" vessel in the Caribbean Sea this Saturday, within established drug trafficking routes, resulting in the deaths of four individuals, as reported by SOUTHCOM on its official X account.
The military statement indicated that "confirmed intelligence revealed the active involvement of the vessel in drug trafficking" and referred to the four deceased as "narcoterrorists." The operation was carried out by the Western Hemisphere Joint Task Force under the direction of Southern Command.
The military did not present public evidence that the vessel was transporting drugs at the time of the attack. A video shared on social media showed black and white aerial surveillance images—apparently captured with an infrared camera—of the moving vessel, followed by a flash.
This is the 69th attack in the series and raises the number of fatalities to at least 231 since the Trump administration began the campaign nearly a year ago, according to data from The Associated Press.
The offensive, known as Operation Southern Spear , was launched in September 2025 and officially expanded two months later. On the occasion of its first anniversary, the toll totaled 227 dead in 68 attacks and 68 vessels destroyed, with only three documented survivors.
The attack on Saturday occurs just 10 days after another kinetic operation in the Caribbean on September 9, which also claimed three lives. At the end of August, a similar attack killed four people in the same area.
The president Donald Trump has declared that the United States is in an "armed conflict" with Latin American cartels and has justified the attacks as a necessary measure to curb the flow of drugs into the country and the overdoses that claim the lives of Americans.
However, according to The Associated Press, his administration has provided little evidence to support its claims of having taken down drug traffickers in each case.
In parallel to the maritime attacks, Washington seeks to expand its presence on land. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, announced during a visit to Panama last month that Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras had agreed to allow joint military operations with the U.S. against criminal groups in their territories.
Guatemala denied having reached such an agreement. Ecuador, for its part, began joint missions with U.S. forces in March.
The U.S. has also deployed 1,300 Marines in the Caribbean along with advanced drone systems and artificial intelligence for maritime surveillance and interdiction, in a campaign that extends to both the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The accumulated figure of over 230 deaths in less than a year has sparked criticism from human rights organizations and media outlets, which point out the lack of public evidence in most cases and warn about the possibility that among the victims there may be fishermen or other individuals unrelated to drug trafficking.
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