WASHINGTON − The U.S. military, working with Ecuadoran authorities, boarded and later blew up a ship they say was used as a refueling vessel for drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean, U.S. Southern Command said.
"Today's interdiction and sinking of a floating refueling station used for at-sea drug trafficking operations dealt a direct blow to the logistics network fueling narco-terrorists and cartels in the Western Hemisphere,” SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis Donovan said in an X post about the Aug. 28 operation. “By severing this critical maritime node, our Joint Force … fractured a primary artery of this illicit logistics chain and sent an unmistakable message to narco-terrorists across the region."
The vessel was boarded in international
waters near Ecuador, and was believed to be part of a trafficking ring run by the Los Choneros organization, the military said.
In video provided by the Pentagon and posted on X, the ship is shown being boarded by Marines and sailors from the amphibious transport ship USS San Antonio and cleared without incident. People were then taken off the boat and transported to Ecuador, Southcom said, and afterward the U.S. sank the boat with an airstrike.
Video posted to X by Southcom showed parts of those efforts.
Donovan did not specifically say the drugs were believed headed for the United States, but that, working together with “our Ecuadorian partners, our coalition dealt a decisive blow to a narco-terrorist operation responsible for moving significant amounts of drugs through the region.”
Intelligence confirmed that the vessel, previously identified and targeted under Department of the Treasury sanctions, was operating in support of the violent Los Choneros narco-terrorist organization, Southcom said in a statement.
In September, two Ecuadoran criminal groups, the Choneros and Lobos, were designated foreign terrorist organizations by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They are Ecuador’s two largest criminal groups, according to the research group InSight Crime.
The strike comes as the Trump administration continues to target alleged drug traffickers with lethal military strikes, mostly on small boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean.
The latest came on Aug. 25 when four people were killed in a boat strike in the Caribbean.
In all, the U.S. military has killed more than 200 people in what many legal experts and former military lawyers say constitutes illegal military orders that service members should refuse to follow.
Before the Trump-era boat strikes, the United States viewed the drug trade as a law enforcement issue and tasked the Coast Guard with interdicting boats trying to bring drugs into the country.
The Trump administration has justified killing suspected drug traffickers rather than arresting and prosecuting them by defining them as "narcoterrorists" in President Donald Trump’s second term.
The military has published dozens of videos of the attacks on social media – grainy, black-and-white videos taken from above of boats speeding through the water before they explode into balls of flame.
Trump officials continue to say the attacks are lawful. At a June 2 Senate budget hearing, Rubio said every boat strike "has a legal officer on the deck that has to make a determination about whether the call is legal or not."
Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US and Ecuador board, blow up alleged drug-trafficking boat in Pacific
