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The US military said Tuesday it blew up a suspected drug boat in the eastern Pacific, killing five people, the latest strike in a campaign that has now left more than 240 dead.

Getting into it: US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said the strike hit a “go-fast vessel” traveling along known drug-trafficking routes and that intelligence confirmed the boat was involved in smuggling. A video the command posted on X shows the small boat sitting almost still in the water before an explosion swallows it.

SOUTHCOM has carried out at least three deadly strikes this month, including one on Oct. 4 that killed four people on another boat. The Trump administration started hitting suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific in September 2025, and it has carried out about 70 strikes since.

The strikes come as President Donald Trump says the US is in an “armed conflict” with Latin American cartels and calls the strikes necessary to stop drugs from reaching American shores. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has insisted they’re legal, and the military has repeatedly said it verified that every person killed belonged to a group the US has labeled a terrorist organization.

But the administration has rarely shown proof, and families of some of the dead say their relatives were just out fishing or working. A United Nations investigation concluded in September that the killings could qualify as murder under international law. The families of two Trinidadian men killed last October are suing the US government, and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia wrote to the White House that the strikes have likely killed people who had nothing to do with drug trafficking. Critics also note that the fentanyl driving most US overdose deaths typically crosses the border from Mexico by land, not by sea.