In a statement shared on its website on Friday, the Coast Guard said the three-day search had been focused on water “approximately 400 nautical miles [about 740kilometers] southwest of the Mexico/Guatemala border” and had continued for more than 65 hours, but that no sightings of survivors had been reported.

US media outlets had  reported that the search was taking place in an area where weather conditions included “nine-foot seas, and 40-knot winds”.

The US military’s Southern Command on Tuesday said that it struck three boats travelling in a convoy in the eastern Pacific. It said three people were killed on one of the boats, but the passengers of the others jumped overboard, “distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels”.

Another two people were killed in a subsequent strike on another boat, according to the military, which did not provide the location. In both instances, the military said the boats were smuggling drugs, without providing evidence. The attacks bring the total number of known boat strikes to 33 and the number of people killed to at least 115 since early September, according to numbers shared by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

The Coast Guard did not say  how many survivors were believed to be in the water. The military had previously said it immediately notified the Coast Guard because it did not have any Navy ships in the immediate area. The Coast Guard then dispatched a plan from California and notified ships in the area.

Human rights observers and international law experts said US military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats amount to extrajudicial killings, meaning they are taking place without any legal authority or due process. The Trump administration has said the targets are so-called “narcoterrorists” driven not by profit but ambitions to destabilise the US through the drug trade. (Aljazeera)