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After Undercounting Boat Strike Killings, U.S. Military Updates Death Toll

After questions from The Intercept, U.S. Southern Command updated its count of civilians killed in boat strikes to 123.

Nick Turse

January 8 2026, 1:32 p.m.

Screenshot from a video U.S. Southern Command posted on X on Dec. 31, 2025, to announce an attack the day prior. Screenshot: @Southcom/X

The United States killed 11 civilians in boat strikes on December 30 — eight more people than previously reported, according to new figures provided exclusively to The Intercept by Col. Emanuel Ortiz, Southern Command’s chief of public affairs. This attack on three vessels represents one of the largest single-day death tolls since the U.S. military began targeting alleged drug smuggling boats last September. The U.S military has now killed 123 people in the campaign.

When the December 30 attack was first announced, SOUTHCOM said only that after striking one vessel and killing three people, an unspecified number of crew from two nearby boats leapt into the Pacific Ocean. After several days, the U.S. Coast Guard abandoned the search for the men. A U.S. official told The Intercept that the survivors were presumed dead.

Following reporting by The Intercept on the December 30 attack and discrepancies in Southern Command’s count of the total number of strikes and casualties, Ortiz provided further information. “Eight narco-terrorists from the remaining two vessels, four in each, abandoned their vessels, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels,” Ortiz said.

The SOUTHCOM public affairs chief also provided an updated tally of strikes, casualties, and the vessels targeted since September 2. “As of Jan. 7, 2026, there have been 35 total kinetic strikes with 36 go-fast boats destroyed, including one semi-submersible and one low-profile vessel, and 123 narco-terrorist deaths,” said Ortiz.

According to Ortiz, “114 narco-terrorists were killed during kinetic engagements, with active searches suspended for nine and two wounded repatriated to their home countries.”

The Intercept was the first outlet to report that the U.S. military killed two survivors of the initial boat attack on September 2 in a follow-up strike. The two survivors clung to the wreckage of a vessel attacked by the U.S. military for roughly 45 minutes before Adm. Frank Bradley, then the head of Joint Special Operations Command, ordered a follow-up strike that killed the shipwrecked men.

Following an October 16 attack on a semi-submersible in the Caribbean Sea that killed two civilians, two other men were rescued by the U.S. and quickly repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador, respectively.

Following three attacks on October 27 that killed 15 people aboard four separate boats, a survivor of a strike was spotted clinging to wreckage, and the U.S. alerted Mexican authorities. The man was not found, and he is presumed dead. The eight people who leapt into the water to avoid being killed in boat strikes on December 30 are also presumed dead.

Experts in the laws of war and members of Congress, from both parties, have said the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings. William Baumgartner, a retired U.S. Coast Guard rear admiral and former chief counsel of that service branch, told The Intercept that while there were legal and moral distinctions between attacking the survivors of the September 2 strike and U.S. actions following the December 30 attack, the latter was still tantamount to a death sentence. He said that destroying the boats of the people who leapt into nine-foot seas and 40-knot winds was “essentially the same as putting a gun to their head.”