WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The United States (US) is planning land attacks against drug traffickers in Latin America, expanding an airstrike campaign against presumed drug-running boats in international waters, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said in Panama.

Last September, US President Donald Trump’s administration launched a bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, leaving at least 215 people dead. The campaign has been criticised as amounting to extra-judicial killings.

Plans for anti-drug operations on land are on the agenda of an alliance of 19 countries led by Trump that could expand to wherever drug gangs operate, Hegseth told journalists.