The US military launched a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific on Friday, killing three men in its second strike this week.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” US Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said on Twitter/X.

No US military forces were harmed, according to Southern Command, which is now led by Gen Francis Donovan.

Friday’s strike brought the total number of people killed in US strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats since September to at least 148. Earlier this week, another US military strike killed 11 people, making it one of the deadliest attacks this year.

A 16-second clip posted by the Southern Command on Friday shows a single strike being launched at the boat, which later burst into flames.

The strike is part of the Trump administration’s buildup of US forces in the region to allegedly intercept drug traffickers.

Just how legal these strikes are has been of rising concern for lawmakers and legal experts, with some arguing that the Pentagon is carrying out extrajudicial killings and exerting “abuse of power with life-or-death consequences”.

“Under both U.S. and international law, it is flagrantly illegal to use the military to kill civilians suspected only of crimes,” reads a December statement by Jeffrey Stein, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Christopher Anders, director of the Democracy and Technology Division at ACLU. “Civilians, including those suspected of smuggling drugs, are not lawful targets. Just because the Trump administration says these strikes are firmly grounded in law doesn’t make it true.”

Donovan took over the US Southern Command after Adm Alvin Holsey abruptly retired, reportedly over disagreements about the strike policy.