(AFP) – The US military said it had blown up another boat with alleged links to Ecuadoran drug gangs, bringing to three the number of vessels it has sunk in the area in a week. Thursday’s operation by US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is part of a broader US campaign of strikes on alleged Latin American drug boats that have left more than 200 people dead since last year.
Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said on X it struck a vessel “operating as a floating refueling station in support of illicit at-sea drug trafficking operations” in the Eastern Pacific. It said its intelligence had confirmed the vessel was working with the Los Choneros, a “violent narco-terrorist organization.” This is a notorious Ecuadoran gang that has ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.
It added that an unspecified number of individuals aboard the boat had been “safely transferred” to authorities in Ecuador before the sinking, which came a day after a separate US strike. Ecuador’s Navy said it received 28 crew members from that vessel and the boat that was sunk on Wednesday. On Friday last, the military also destroyed a boat after intercepting and evacuating the crew.
In Manta, the country’s main fishing port, a group of people awaited news Friday of their relatives who, they said, were traveling on the boats targeted in the past two days. “The captain gathered us together to give us good news that our fishermen are coming back… they’re alive, they’re okay,” Ginger Reyes, 35, the wife of the captain of one of the vessels, told AFP. As they waited, dozens of people protested the disappearance of eight fishermen between January and March, which family members and the NGO Human Rights Watch blame on US military personnel.
“I don’t know what to do anymore… I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, thinking about my son. I want them to return him to me,” said María Cueva, weeping as she held a photograph of the 25-year-old. Washington denies any involvement in the disappearance of the eight men.
The airstrikes have instilled deep fear in Ecuadoran fishermen. “We’re all afraid something might happen to us,” Fausto Soza told AFP, adding he had not gone out to sea for two months for fear of being targeted. US President Donald Trump’s administration has not provided definitive evidence that the vessels it has been targeting in the Pacific and the Caribbean are involved in drug trafficking. But his campaign of strikes has the full support of Ecuador’s right-wing President Daniel Noboa, who has gone to war against the gangs that have sown terror in the South American country.
Ecuador serves as a gateway to international markets for 70 percent of the cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru, the world’s leading producers of the drug. Interior Minister John Reimberg claimed that the vessels targeted by US forces were used by drug traffickers to ship cocaine to Mexico and the United States. Noboa in March was among the first leaders to join the US leader’s “Shield of the Americas,” a Washington-led coalition to combat drug trafficking in the region. In recent weeks, US special forces have been carrying out joint operations with Ecuador’s military.
© 2024 AFP
