The United States hit a suspected narcotrafficking vessel in the eastern Pacific and Costa Rica later received two bodies and one critically injured survivor off the southern coast. The survivor was taken to Hospital Manuel Mora Valverde in Golfito after being brought ashore by Costa Rica’s Coast Guard.
U.S. Southern Command said the operation was a lethal kinetic strike carried out March 19 by Joint Task Force Southern Spear against what it described as a low-profile vessel traveling along known drug-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific. The command said intelligence indicated the craft was engaged in narcotrafficking operations and that three people survived the strike, prompting an immediate search-and-rescue alert to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Costa Rican authorities were pulled into the case yesterday after the National Coast Guard Operations Center received an alert about a possible shipwreck roughly 126 nautical miles from Golfito, on our southern Pacific coast. Rescue crews found one person alive in the water with severe burns and major chest trauma, while two others showed no signs of life.
The two bodies were later handed over at sea by a U.S. Navy unit to Costa Rica’s Coast Guard Service. Once the boat reached port, the remains were transferred to the Judicial Investigation Agency. Costa Rican authorities had not publicly identified the victims or the survivor as of yesterday, and it was not immediately clear how many people had been aboard the vessel when it was struck.
The case puts Costa Rica in the aftermath of an increasingly aggressive U.S. campaign against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Pacific and Caribbean. Washington has framed the operations as part of a wider offensive against criminal groups it now links to narco-terrorism, while critics across the region have raised questions about the legality of military strikes on civilian-style vessels at sea.
