The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced on Sunday that U.S. forces carried out a “lethal kinetic strike” against a drug-trafficking vessel in Eastern Pacific waters, killing three male narco-terrorists.
SOUTHCOM informed in an official statement that the operation was carried out by Joint Task Force Southern Spear at the direction of Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the statement read.
“Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action. No U.S. military forces were harmed,” the statement concluded.
SOUTHCOM shared unclassified footage of the strike on its website and on social media.
Sunday’s strike is the latest publicly known military operation of its nature since the start of Operation Southern Spear, a U.S. military counter-narco-terrorism security campaign launched by the Department of War in late 2025 aimed at detecting, disrupting, and degrading transnational criminal and illicit maritime networks.
The strike comes hours after SOUTHCOM announced on Friday that it carried out a separate lethal kinetic strike that day against another drug-trafficking vessel in the Eastern Pacific, killing two male narco-terrorists. Like Sunday’s operation, no U.S. military forces were harmed during the April 24 strike. Over 50 strikes have been carried out against drug trafficking vessels since September, with at least 185 drug traffickers reportedly killed since then.
In addition to conducting strikes against drug-laden vessels operating in known narco-trafficking routes across the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean Oceans, Operation Southern Spear has successfully conducted at least six interdictions of oil tankers illegally transporting U.S.-sanctioned oil.
“Joint Task Force Southern Spear continues to conduct decisive operations to detect, disrupt, and dismantle narco-terrorist networks. In support of the President’s directives, the U.S. Coast Guard’s Maritime Security Response Team, accompanied by U.S. Marine Corps Special Purpose Forces, continue to support maritime interdiction operations to target the dark fleet that is enabling U.S. adversaries across the globe,” Gen. Donovan said in a Saturday statement.
Operation Southern Spear has also led to U.S.-friendly Latin American countries engaging in joint anti-drug trafficking collaboration with SOUTHCOM over the past months.
In March, SOUTHCOM announced that it would begin working with the administration of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and conduct joint military operations in Ecuador against narco-terrorist groups. Days later, Ecuador announced that, with the help of the United States, it had successfully seized 1.9 tons of suspected U.S.-bound drugs.
In November, shortly after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth formally announced Operation Southern Spear, the Dominican Republic announced that it had carried out two back-to-back drug bust operations with the help of U.S. forces, seizing hundreds of packages of presumptive cocaine.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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