U.S. Military Bombed Ecuadorian Dairy Farm It Called a Drug Camp

José Peña, 66, hid in the bushes as two Ecuadoran military helicopters thudded overhead. Then came the explosion he says "shook everything" and pulverized the farm where he worked. The U.S. and Ecuadoran governments had a different description for what was destroyed that day: a terrorist training camp.

On March 6, Ecuador and the United States conducted a joint operation in which the United States bombed a camp along the Colombia-Ecuador border that was alleged to belong to Comandos de la Frontera, a group of FARC dissidents accused of drug smuggling. The operation used helicopters, aircraft, river boats and drones to locate and bomb the site in northeastern Ecuador near the Colombian border. Ecuador's defense ministry said the camp belonged to the Comandos de la Frontera, a Colombian criminal organization made up of FARC dissidents, and had capacity for 50 people.

Residents of the area told reporters visiting the site that the targeted location was actually a dairy farm. An airstrike ordered by Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa, as part of the U.S.-backed anti-narcotics campaign, reduced the farm to rubble, and the farmer who worked there insists there was only a cattle operation on the property. Journalists who visited the remote border zone saw three buildings reduced to rubble, their scorched zinc roofing twisted among the debris.

Noboa had publicly claimed victory. In an Instagram post accompanied by video of a house exploding in a forested area, he wrote: "We destroyed the hideout of Mono Tole, the leader of the CDF (Border Commandos), and a training area for drug traffickers." According to Ecuador's Defense Ministry, the camp was located in the Cascales canton, in the Santa Rosa sector of Sucumbíos province.

The U.S. military publicly embraced the strike. At the order of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, SOUTHCOM Commander General Francis L. Donovan directed the joint force to support Ecuadoran forces conducting "lethal kinetic operations against Designated Terrorist Organizations" within Ecuador. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell declared on X: "At the request of Ecuador, the Department of War executed targeted action to advance our shared objective of dismantling narco-terrorist networks." Days after the strike, the White House sent Congress a war powers report announcing the introduction of U.S. armed forces into "hostilities" in Ecuador, describing "military action taken on March 6, 2026, against the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization."

Initial reporting indicated the U.S. was not directly participating in the operations, instead providing intelligence and logistical support, as well as U.S. special forces training for Ecuadoran commandos. But the messaging from the administration was a strange combination of bluster and ambiguity: on the one hand, the so-called "Secretary of War" was eager to boast on social media about "bombing Narco Terrorists on land," while on the other, the administration did not clearly state whether it was the United States doing the bombing, nor did it specify who was being bombed.

The U.S.-backed crackdown along the Ecuador-Colombia border sparked accusations that security forces bombed farms, burned homes and detained and abused villagers. Local news reporters informed that the U.S. and Ecuadoran militaries had bombed the homes of peasants and small farmers and tortured agricultural workers who denied any illegal activities. One outlet interviewed people in the town of San Martín, located in the same border region in Sucumbíos targeted by the troops. One resident, Wilmar Garzón, explained that "The Ecuadorian army is coming to burn down the houses, and they bombed them after burning them down." Another, Vicente Garrido, said: "We were working with other co-workers when the planes came here."

The operation's consequences have already crossed an international border. A New York Times reporting team working in the border zone was informed by local farmers that they had discovered a large unexploded bomb on a farm; the journalists then formally notified Colombian authorities of the explosive's presence. Specialists consulted by the Times determined the device was a Mark-82 bomb of U.S. origin, weighing approximately 227 kilograms and widely used in military operations. Colombian President Gustavo Petro publicly accused Ecuador of bombing across the border; Noboa dismissed the accusation as false.

The United Nations human rights office received complaints from residents of the 600-kilometer border region, where armed groups linked to drug trafficking operate.

The strike is part of a far broader Trump administration campaign. As of March 20, at least 159 people had been killed in 46 strikes on 47 vessels as part of the same anti-narcotics military push. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, addressing Latin American defense leaders, laid out the philosophy behind the approach: "We have learned after decades of effort that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem. The reason why this is a conference with military leadership and not a conference of lawyers is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power."

Noboa has made a military crackdown on organized crime a cornerstone of his administration and imposed tariffs on neighboring Colombia, accusing it of not doing enough to fight drug trafficking. Neither the contradictions between official accounts and on-the-ground testimony, nor the unexploded bomb found across the border, have prompted either government to suspend the joint operations. Pentagon-aligned analysts have characterized the U.S.-Ecuadoran campaign as "setting the pace for regional, deterrence-focused operations against cartel infrastructure throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.