In the waters off South America, the United States military has begun sinking fishing vessels it accuses of fueling the speedboats that carry cocaine northward — a deliberate shift from seizure to destruction in the long, unresolved struggle against drug trafficking. Six boats have gone down in a fortnight, and with them go questions that no press release has answered: what became of the crews, whether all six were truly complicit, and what international law permits when a fishing vessel becomes a node in a supply chain. Humanity has long wrestled with the distance between a legitimate target
U.S. Military Sinks Six Fishing Vessels in Escalated Drug-Trafficking Crackdown
Six fishing vessels were destroyed; potential impact on crew members and fishing communities dependent on these vessels, though specific casualty figures not provided in source.