Twenty Ecuadorian fishermen aboard the Don Maca have described being struck by two drone blasts and detained at gunpoint by personnel on a US-flagged patrol vessel while fishing roughly 200 miles north-west of the Galápagos Islands on 26 March. The crew say the explosions shattered the vessel, injured several men, and knocked out communications, after which they were hooded, handcuffed, and transferred — first to a Salvadorian patrol boat and later to a military base in El Salvador — before being returned to Ecuador and released without charge. The account, one of the first detailed survivor testimonies to emerge from the US military's ongoing anti-narcotics campaign in the eastern Pacific, raises fresh legal questions: rights group the Washington Office on Latin America has tallied 178 deaths across at least 49 attacks since September, and lawyers for the crew say the operation may constitute enforced disappearance and a violation of international law — allegations the Pentagon and White House have not addressed.