The U.S. military announced on Tuesday that it attacked a boat it accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing five people. The Southern Command statement included video of the boat exploding in a ball of fire. As usual, the US provided no evidence that the boat was hauling drugs or that the five people aboard were drug traffickers, only the boilerplate statement that “intelligence revealed the vessel´s active involvement in narcotrafficking.”

Meanwhile, AFP published satellite imagery showing a US millitary buildup aat an airbase in Ecuador about 25 km east of the city of Guayaquil. One image shows two Osprey tiltrotor aircraft parked on the ramp along with recently added structures. AFP observed significant new construction work at the decades-old facility, identified around 20 US military flights between June and mid-October, and obtained documents referring to the presence of US troops at the base.

Among the documents cited by AFP is a letter dated Sept. 8, in which then–Air Force commander Mauricio Salazar warned the top brass at Joint Armed Forces Command that hosting US troops at Taura, supporting the US Air Force and receiving ongoing flights by US personnel might be illegal or unconstitutional. His letter states that the US Air Force would “use and modify infrastructure at the base” and operate “temporary support flights” from there. Two days later, he was removed from his post.