US Coast Guard suspends search for survivors of Pacific boat strike

The US Coast Guard announced that its search for survivors had been postponed in response to the US military’s ongoing military exercise in Venezuelan waters, which included the killing of two additional boats in the eastern region.

The Coast Guard stated in a statement posted on its website on Friday that the three-day search had been focused on water “approximately 400 nautical miles]about 740 kilometers] southwest of the Mexico/Guatemala border” and had searched for more than 65 hours, but that no survivors had been seen.

Prior to this, US media reported that the search was being conducted in a region with “nine-foot seas, and 40-knot winds.”

According to the US military’s Southern Command, three boats were struck by a convoy in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday. The passengers of the other boats jumped overboard, “distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels,” according to the statement that three people were killed on one of the boats.

The military, which did not specify the location, claimed that two more people were killed by a subsequent attack on a different boat.

Without providing any supporting documentation, the military claimed that the boats were smuggling drugs in both instances.

According to the administration of US President Donald Trump, the number of known boat strikes and the total number of fatalities has increased to 33 since early September.

On Friday, the Coast Guard did not release the number of people who are thought to be in the water. Prior to this, the military had previously stated that because there were no Navy ships nearby, it should notify the Coast Guard right away.

The Coast Guard then alerted ships in the area and sent a plan from California.

According to human rights organizations and international law experts, US military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats constitute extrajudicial killings, meaning they are occurring without the aid of proper authorities or due process.

According to the Trump administration, the targets are allegedly ‘narcoterrorists’ who are driven not by profits but by an attempt to destabilize the US through the drug trade.

Following the military’s follow-on strike on a boat in the Caribbean in early September, which appeared to have killed survivors of the first strike, the organization faced particular scrutiny. The attack allegedly violated the military’s own armed conflict laws and regulations.

Other cases of passengers surviving the strike are well documented, including one in late October, when the Mexican Navy had to halt a search for four days. The other two survivors of a submersible vessel’s attack in the Caribbean Sea that same month were found and transported to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia.

The man was later released by Ecuadori authorities, who claimed there was no proof that he had committed a crime there.

The US military has largely targeted vessels in Venezuelan waters, which have seen an increase in US sanctions and a significant increase in US military installations along its borders, and what Trump has described as an attack on a dock in Venezuelan territory.

Venezuelan oil tankers that have been sanctioned have also been subject to a blockade by the Trump administration.

Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, claimed that the US wants to seize Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and overthrow his government.