This video screengrab shows a US military strike on a boat in international waters.

• The US military killed three people on a vessel in the Caribbean.
• US Southern Command announced the deaths, saying the boat was operated by “Designated Terrorist Organisations”.
• International legal experts and rights groups say the strikes likely amount to extrajudicial killings.

The US military said it killed three people in a strike on an alleged drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean on Sunday, bringing the controversial campaign’s death toll to at least 180.

US President Donald Trump’s administration insists it is effectively at war with what it calls “narco-terrorists” in Latin America, and began targeting suspected drug-smuggling boats last September.

US Southern Command, which is responsible for Washington’s forces in the region, said it conducted a “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organisations”.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action,” it said in a post on X.

US military officials have claimed at least six such strikes in April, bringing the total toll of people killed in these operations at least 180, according to an AFP tally.

READ | Democrats, Republicans urge Trump administration to release double tap boat strike video

Reuters reported that the US military has so far killed 157 alleged members ⁠or affiliates of drug organisations in 45 strikes against drug trafficking vessels ⁠in the Western Hemisphere, a senior US defence official said in March.

The Trump administration 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 US.

According to Reuters, family members of two men killed in a US missile strike against a suspected drug boat that was travelling from Venezuela filed a wrongful death lawsuit in January, alleging the pair were murdered in a “manifestly unlawful” military campaign targeting civilian vessels.

Family members of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo - two Trinidadian men who were among six killed during a 14 October strike - in the lawsuit say the two men did fishing and farm work in Venezuela and had been returning to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad when they were attacked.

“These are totally unjustifiable killings by an administration that has claimed the right to abuse executive power with impunity,” said Brett Max Kaufman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“And this lawsuit is a demand for accountability and a defence of the rule of law.”

His group and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the novel lawsuit under the Death on the High Seas Act, a maritime law that allows family members to sue for wrongful deaths occurring on the high seas, and the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows foreign citizens to sue in US courts for violations of international law.

The lawsuit was filed by Lenore Burnley, Joseph’s mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo’s sister, and seeks only damages from the US government for the two deaths, not an injunction that would prevent further strikes.

But the case could provide an avenue for a court to assess whether the 14 October strike was legal.