Three people were killed in a US strike on another alleged drug-trafficking boat, the fifth such deadly attack in as many days, military officials have announced.

US southern command said it conducted “a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations” in the eastern Pacific, without naming the alleged group, in an X post.

“Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action.”

The latest strike brings the total toll to at least 177 killed, according to a tally compiled by the AFP news agency.

On Monday the US military said that it blew up two boats that it accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing a total of five people and leaving one survivor. Then on Tuesday, the military said it killed four more people in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

President Donald Trump’s administration insists it is effectively at war with what it calls “narco-terrorists” operating in Latin America. But it has provided no definitive evidence that the vessels it targets are involved in drug trafficking, prompting heated debate about the legality of the operations.

International legal experts and rights groups say the strikes likely amount to extrajudicial killings as they have apparently targeted civilians who do not pose an immediate threat to the United States.

In January, lawyers filed a federal lawsuit against the US on behalf of the families of two men from a fishing village in Trinidad who were killed in an October strike on a small boat in the Caribbean, saying the “premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification”.

“The administration continues to push unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims about who these people were, despite investigations showing that some of those killed were fishermen just trying to make a living for their families,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in December.

Last month, the Democratic representatives Joaquin Castro and Sara Jacobs wrote to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, raising alarms about the killings and noting the names and nationalities of most victims remain unknown.

The boat strikes have continued in Latin America even as the US military has focused on operations in the Middle East, where the US has been engaged in a war with Iran for several weeks.

With Agence France-Presse