14 killed in US strikestargeting narco-traffickers

The US military conducted strikes against four more boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Monday, killing 14 people on board the vessels, with one survivor, according to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
It marked the first-time multiple strikes were conducted on the same day as part of the Trump administration’s accelerating campaign against boats allegedly involved in drug trafficking. According to Hegseth, Mexican authorities have assumed responsibility for coordinating the search and rescue of the one survivor.
Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. There were three strikes in the Pacific on Monday – with one hitting two boats at once – and bringing the total number of known strikes carried out by the US military on alleged drug-smuggling vessels to 13 since the start of September. To date, those operations have destroyed a total of 14 boats and killed 57 people — with three total survivors.
Last week, the US military conducted its first round of strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which appeared to mark an expansion of the campaign as all seven previous strikes had targeted boats in the Caribbean Sea.
Earlier this month, a US strike against a vessel in the Caribbean also did not kill everyone on board. In that case, the US Navy initially detained two survivors, but the Trump administration quickly repatriated the two men back to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
The situation set up a legal and policy dilemma because it was unclear what legal authority the US military would be able to cite to detain the survivors indefinitely.
The Trump administration has produced a classified legal opinion seeking to justify lethal strikes against a secret and expansive list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers, CNN has reported.