UN investigator says US strikes on drug boats may violate international law

A UN report has concluded that recent US airstrikes on vessels allegedly trafficking drugs breached international law and could constitute crimes against humanity.

The report by Special Rapporteur Ben Saul said since September last year there had been at least 68 US strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, outside US territorial waters, which killed more than 220 people.

Saul said that even if targets could be identified as members of designated terrorist groups, they had not staged an armed attack on the US which would trigger a right to self-defence under international law.

The report comes two days after the US military said it killed four people in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean.

"Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed four narco-terrorists," Southcom, which commands US forces in the region, said in a statement about the latest attack, which was accompanied by a grainy video.

But in a briefing note released by the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, Saul said that "such attacks amount to serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life, being unjustified in national or personal self-defence or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions, or international counter-terrorism law".

"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 concluded.

BBC News has contacted the White House and State Department for a response to the report.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously said the overall operation is aimed at removing "narco-terrorists from our hemisphere" and securing the US from "the drugs that are killing our people".

The US military launched the operation, known as "Southern Spear", in early September.

However, officials have not offered definitive evidence that the vessels targeted are involved in trafficking.

Since the beginning, experts have questioned the legality of the strikes, which initially drew strong criticism from Latin American leaders whose citizens have been targeted.

However, Nicolás Maduro, who was the Venezuelan leader at the time and opposed the strikes, was seized by US forces in a dramatic and highly controversial night-time raid on the capital Caracas at the beginning of this year.

Another outspoken critic of Operation Southern Spear, Colombia's left-wing president at the time, Gustavo Petro, stood down in August after a Trump-backed candidate won June's presidential election.