Lizbeth Perez looks fearful as she gazes out onto the postcard-perfect fishing bay of Taganga, on Colombia's Caribbean coast, recalling the moment she last spoke to her uncle in September.
He was a kind man, a good person, a friend. A good father, uncle son. He was a cheerful person. He loved his work and his fishing.
Alejandro Carranza said goodbye to his family early on the morning on 14 September, before going out on his boat as usual, his cousin Audenis Manjarres told state media. He left from La Guajira, a region in neighbouring Venezuela, he said.
The next day, US President Donald Trump announced that a US strike in international waters had targeted a vessel which had departed Venezuela, and that three people he described as extraordinarily violent drug-trafficking cartels and narco-terrorists were killed.
Ms Perez has not seen her uncle since. His five children are missing their dad, she says, and the family are still waiting anxiously for answers, not knowing if he was even on the boat hit in the strike.
The truth is we don't know it was him, we don't have any proof that it was him, apart from what we saw on the news.
The US began striking alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean in September, before expanding the operation to the Pacific. So far 83 people have been killed in at least 21 strikes, according to US statements.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says that the campaign is aimed at removing narco-terrorists from our hemisphere and securing the US from the drugs that are killing our people.
The Trump administration justifies them as a necessary self-defence measure aimed at saving American lives by stopping drugs from entering the US.
But the strikes have attracted condemnation in countries in the region and concern that they breach international law.
Colombia's President Gustavo Petro has criticised the strikes, saying Colombian citizens were on board the boat hit on 15 September, and later claiming Mr Carranza was among those killed.
Responding to his first statement about Colombian citizens being killed, the White House said it looked forward to President Petro publicly retracting his baseless and reprehensible statement.
Trump has also accused Petro of encouraging the production of drugs and threated to cut off US aid to Colombia.
Mr Carranza comes from a huge family, living with about 20 relatives in a small house off a dirt track in the fishing village of Gaira.
Earlier this month, Petro alleged that he wanted to help his daughter study at university, and so accepted a payment from a drug trafficker to transport some drugs to an island, when his boat was struck.
But whether it was fish or cocaine [he was transporting], he wasn't subject to the death penalty, Petro said. He accused the US of murder and since said he ordered Colombian public security forces to suspend intelligence sharing with the US until the strikes end.
His defence minister later said the president had given clear instructions to maintain, as has been done, a continuous flow of information with international agencies to combat drug trafficking.
Mr Carranza has a past criminal record over stealing weapons from the police nine years ago, but his family deny – and say they are hurt by – characterisations of him as a narco-trafficker.
What the president of the United States is doing isn't right. He has to prove if they are or aren't [trafficking], Lizbeth says.
She says while Trump may want to tackle issues affecting his territory that doesn't mean he should resort to these methods… of taking someone's life.
A US lawyer working for some of Mr Carranza's family, Daniel Kovalik, who also works for President Petro, says Mr Carranza's wife and older daughter recognised his boat from the US-released footage of the strike.
He intends to sue the US government on the family's behalf. International law says the military cannot kill civilians unless they pose an imminent threat of violence, even if engaging in criminal activity.
Mr Kovalik does not buy the US's self-defence argument, saying these boats have never attacked the United States.
Most in this region do not believe that this is just about targeting small, alleged drug-trafficking boats, but instead about the US also wanting to put military pressure on Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro to step aside – or on his allies, for example in the military, to oust him.
The US accuses Maduro of leading a criminal trafficking organisation which it calls the Cartel de los Soles, something Maduro strongly denies. The US state department intends to designate this group a foreign terrorist organisation on Monday.
This has added to growing speculation over whether the US will strike targets on Venezuelan soil itself.
