By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) – The US military said on Sunday four people were killed in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, the latest in a series of attacks that Washington says target “narco-terrorists” but human rights experts condemn as extrajudicial killings.
DETAILS:
• The US Southern Command said on X it “executed a lethal, kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean.”
• It cited what it called “confirmed intelligence” to allege the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking, without providing more details.
• It added that four people, whom it called “narco-terrorists,” were killed.
• President Donald Trump’s administration has said the vessels it has struck since September 2025 were transporting narcotics.
• US strikes on such vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have killed more than 220 people.
• Experts and rights advocates in the US and abroad have questioned the legality of the strikes.
• Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and independent UN experts have called the strikes unlawful extrajudicial killings.
• Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, has said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” such attacks “constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law.”
• The American Civil Liberties Union has cast the assertions by the Trump administration against those it targets as “unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims.”
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Kevin Buckland)
