Medellin, Colombia – The U.S. Southern Command announced on Wednesday that four people were killed in a deadly kinetic attack on a ship operated by a designated terrorist organization.
The strike comes just weeks after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) met on March 13 to discuss the legality of the campaign.
Wednesday’s was the 47th reported attack since President Donald Trump’s administration launched Operation Southern Window in September, killing at least 163 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
At an IACHR hearing in Guatemala City earlier this month, various human rights and international law experts, including UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Ben Saul, condemned the strike.
Prime Minister Saul said, “Such unjustified extrajudicial serial killings cannot be justified under international law and are a serious violation of the right to life,” adding, “It is not an act for national self-defense, personal self-defense, or defense of others,” and urged the prosecution of the military and political leaders behind the attack.
The United States has repeatedly argued that the strike is a just response to deaths caused by drugs flowing into the country.
Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program, emphasized that the United States must be held to the same legal standards as other countries against these “planned and intentional extrajudicial killings.”
Human Rights Watch (HRW) also condemned the U.S. bombing of Latin America as illegal in a statement released on Tuesday.
“The recent U.S. airstrike on a ship in the Caribbean that reportedly killed four people shows a continuing pattern of unlawful use of lethal force, amounting to extrajudicial executions, outside the context of armed conflict,” the human rights group said.
“These strikes are not one-off incidents and are part of a pattern of using military force where the law does not allow,” said Sarah Yager, HRW’s Washington director. “The fact that these strikes have disappeared from the public eye does not make these violations any less serious or unlawful.”
The families of the deceased have already raised a legal challenge. Relatives of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaro, two fishermen who died off the coast of Venezuela in October, filed a legal lawsuit against the U.S. government in January. The United States has never publicly identified the dead or provided evidence of their crimes.
Featured image: Boat strike in October 2025. Image source: US Navy.
