The United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on human rights while countering terrorism, Ben Saul, concluded that US airstrikes on vessels accused of drug trafficking in the Caribbean and the Pacific breach international law and may amount to crimes against humanity, according to the BBC.

The briefing note released on Monday by the UN Human Rights Council says that since 2 September last year there have been at least 68 US strikes outside US territorial waters, killing more than 220 people, and concludes that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law”. Saul argues that the targets, even when identified as members of groups the United States has designated as terrorist, had not staged an armed attack on the country that would trigger a right to self-defence, and that drug trafficking is a law-enforcement matter. US Southern Command (Southcom) said two days earlier that it had killed four people in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean and claimed the operation killed four “narco-terrorists”; the US government has not offered definitive evidence that the vessels hit were carrying drugs. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says the operation, named Southern Spear, is meant to remove “narco-terrorists” from the hemisphere. On 1 September, UN experts had already called for an end to the strikes and said they may amount to crimes against maritime safety, which would give other countries jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute those responsible.