While US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was being decorated in Quito by Ecuador's president for "helping to promote peace in the region," 10 Ecuadorian fishers whose boat had been blown up by US forces were adrift in the eastern Pacific. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.

Rubio's visit and the Don Rufo incident

On 8 September, a day before Rubio arrived, a US patrol vessel intercepted the fishing boat Don Rufo in international waters near Ecuador.

"The gringos were all armed as if they were going to war," said the boat's captain, Mero Calderón, 50. "I tried to show them our catch to prove that we were there working, but they wouldn't listen," he added.

"They brought two huge bombs aboard, took us to their ship, handcuffed and blindfolded us, and blew our boat to pieces," said Calderón, who along with five other fishers, was handed over to local authorities.

But another 10 crew members were fishing farther out to sea in a smaller boat that was not equipped to make it back to shore. The Ecuadorian navy only rescued them on 10 September, when Rubio was already in Peru preparing to return to the US.

US Southern Command statement

US Southern Command posted an edited 14-second video of the operation and said "intelligence confirmed" that the vessel was being used by a gang as a "floating refuelling station" for speedboats allegedly carrying drugs – which the fishers deny.

It was one of eight operations involving Ecuadorian boats in just more than two weeks – the latest on 16 September – to follow the same pattern. Unlike the nearly 70 US airstrikes in the Pacific and Caribbean that have killed 234 people since last year, crews were removed before the vessels were sunk.

Noboa's support and Trump's statement

Also, rather than unilateral US attacks, the new wave of operations has the open support of Ecuador's far-right president, Daniel Noboa, who is calling them "joint operations".

Donald Trump has compared the drug trafficking operations to the campaign against the Islamic state. "Like ISIS, they should be killed, exiled or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we're doing," Trump said on Tuesday.

Some analysts see the shift as an indication that the US's military strategy against drug trafficking in Latin America has entered a new phase.

"Noboa has offered Ecuador as a 'laboratory' for the implementation of this new phase," said Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Although Ecuador does not produce cocaine like neighbouring Colombia and Peru, over the past decade it has become a major trafficking hub because of its access to the Pacific, including the area where the attacks on boats have been taking place.

"Iron-fist" approach and human rights

Noboa has responded with a controversial "iron-fist" approach to the gangs, issuing repeated states of emergency and expanding the role of the armed forces.

This crackdown however has done little to reduce violence, and instead has eroded human rights. The most notable example of human rights abuse came last year in the case of the "Guayaquil Four", the forced disappearance of four Afro-Ecuadorian boys between the age of 11 and 15. All four boys were found dead, their bodies charred and dismembered.

Despite pushback from voters, Noboa signed an agreement with the White House authorising joint operations and granting US military personnel involved in counter-narcotics operations immunity from criminal prosecution. The operations have also extended to land, with US troops taking part in raids last Thursday.

"Noboa is interested in the optics of a very lethal crackdown and in making Ecuador a place where the Trump administration can refine those methods and show them off," said Freeman, who has also reported on the boat attacks in Ecuador for the New Yorker magazine.

Fishers' situation

An attorney for the fishers said they are "losing their livelihoods", but Marco Rubio maintains the US is still willing to "blow up ships if need be".