Citing Taiwan's Central News Agency, the Liberty Times reports that the US military struck a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, killing five people. Critics continue to call the strikes extrajudicial killings, since no conclusive evidence has been made public.
The Liberty Times reported in the early hours of October 28 (3:00 a.m. Taiwan time), citing Central News Agency, that the US military struck a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, killing five people. The announcement came from the US military itself, and the report cites Agence France-Presse.
광고 문의 · 300×250US Southern Command said on X that the target was 'a high-speed boat traveling along an established drug smuggling route'. It asserted that confirmed intelligence showed the vessel was in fact involved in drug smuggling. Video posted with the statement shows a stationary vessel engulfed in flames after an explosion.
A campaign running since September 2025
The United States began attacking suspected drug boats in early September 2025. President Trump has argued that Washington is effectively at war with Latin America-based drug cartels. By an AFP tally, strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since then have killed at least 235 people.
The controversy persists. The Trump administration has not provided conclusive evidence that the struck vessels were involved in trafficking. Legal experts and rights groups say the targets appear to be civilians posing no immediate threat to the United States, so the strikes may amount to extrajudicial killings. The identities and nationalities of the dead, and whether there were survivors, were not covered in the report and are unconfirmed.
The latest strike is one more case in a repeating pattern and is likely to revive the debate over the legal basis for the operations and the disclosure of evidence. How Congress or the international community will respond was not addressed in the report.
