Sixteen Ecuadorian Fishermen Sue US Government Over March Military Drone Strike on Their Boat

Sixteen Ecuadorian fishermen are suing the US government after surviving a 17 March military drone attack that sank their boat, the La Negra Francesca Duarte II, in the Pacific and left two of them with serious burns. The suit, to be filed Monday in US district court for the western district of Pennsylvania, challenges a campaign the Trump administration says targets narco-terrorists.

According to the filing, seen by the Guardian, the men had no connection to the drug trade and were returning from a two-week fishing trip about 385 nautical miles from the port of Manta when a crew on an unidentified US military vessel targeted them. Two armed drones exploded on the boat, setting it ablaze and destroying it completely. Two crew members were “themselves set on fire and burned on their legs, arms and back”. The strike was part of Operation Southern Spear, announced in November 2025 to counter alleged traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific. The Washington Office on Latin America says as many as 250 people have been killed in the subsequent attacks, and calls them extrajudicial executions because the government has offered no proof that the victims were trafficking.

The Guardian US, a left-leaning outlet, leads with the lawsuit and places the strike within the wider campaign, stressing the death toll, the burns and the lack of public evidence. Truthout, an alternative outlet, frames it as a “boat bombing spree” and its headline adds allegations of kidnapping and torture, saying the fishers were held captive for weeks, a detail absent from the Guardian excerpt. Right-leaning outlets had not reported this story at the time of writing, while the other two sides had.