Amnesty Says U.S. Airstrikes on Boats in Caribbean, Eastern Pacific Killed Nearly 200

Amnesty International said Thursday that a U.S. military campaign of airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific has killed nearly 200 people since September 2025, sharpening scrutiny of an operation that has already drawn congressional demands for records and a Pentagon watchdog review.

In a May 28 press release titled “USA: Death Toll in Campaign of Extrajudicial Killings at Sea Nears 200,” Amnesty said U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, had carried out nearly 60 airstrikes on boats since September 2025. Amnesty said the strikes killed nearly 200 people. The rights group characterized the campaign as extrajudicial killings and called on Congress and the international community to act, but those allegations and legal conclusions have not been adjudicated in court.

Amnesty said the first strike in the campaign took place on Sept. 2, 2025, and killed at least 11 people, which the group described as the deadliest single strike in the operation. It said the campaign later expanded into the eastern Pacific and averaged roughly six strikes a month over the period it reviewed.

The group’s allegations land against a broader public record showing that the strikes occurred. SOUTHCOM and the Pentagon have publicly announced numerous strikes on small vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, referring in some statements and social media posts to “lethal kinetic” operations. In those public descriptions, the military said it was targeting alleged “male narco-terrorists” or boats “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations.”

The dispute centers on whether the U.S. can lawfully use military force this way at sea. The administration’s public position, reflected in official statements, is that the campaign is aimed at maritime trafficking tied to groups it has framed as terrorist organizations, part of a broader fight against what it calls narco-terrorism. Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and legal analysts writing in outlets such as Just Security and Lawfare have questioned that rationale, arguing there is no clearly recognized armed-conflict basis for such strikes and that international human rights law may apply instead.

“With nearly 200 killings, these extrajudicial killings are becoming normalized,” Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s national director for government relations, said in the release.

The Sept. 2 strike has already become a focal point of official scrutiny. Press reports said a follow-on strike killed survivors of the initial attack, fueling demands from lawmakers for unedited video and the orders tied to that operation. Reporting has said language in the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense policy bill, was used to withhold part of the defense secretary’s travel funds until the House and Senate Armed Services committees were shown those materials.

Amnesty on Thursday urged Congress to intensify that oversight. “We call on Congress to urgently utilize all legislative and oversight mechanisms available to stop these air strikes and stop enabling and promoting the militarization of public security in the Americas…” Daniel Noroña, Amnesty International USA’s advocacy director for the Americas, said in the release.

Additional scrutiny is already underway inside the Pentagon. In mid-May, reporting citing a May 11 letter from the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General said the watchdog had opened an evaluation into the targeting process for vessels in SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility under Operation Southern Spear. Civil litigation has also been reported, including federal lawsuits by families of victims, as well as engagement with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a regional human rights body.

Amnesty’s new accounting is significant less because it revisits a single disputed strike than because it alleges a sustained campaign at much larger scale: nearly 60 strikes and nearly 200 deaths over roughly nine months. At the same time, cumulative totals remain contested. Independent trackers such as Airwars and legal researchers have published counts that vary by methodology, so Amnesty’s figure should be understood as the organization’s May 28 estimate rather than a settled official toll.