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By 4pm, the light was softening over the Pacific, and the crew of the Don Maca were finishing a long day hauling in lines of swordfish and albacore. Down in the hold, the mood had settled into the familiar rhythm of a fishing day drawing to a close.

“We were just working, waiting for the last trawler to return,” Jhonny Sebastián Palacios, one of the fishers, told the Guardian. “Everything was perfectly fine.”

From nowhere, an explosion ripped through the boat. “There was a sudden crash – boom! It came from a drone,” he said.

The blast tore through the vessel, shattering glass, and injuring several crew members. “I ran upstairs and saw the boat destroyed … The whole ship was stripped bare,” he said.

A group of Ecuadorian fishers have described how they were attacked in a double drone strike and then detained at gunpoint by soldiers on a US-flagged patrol vessel, in a rare first-hand account by victims of Donald Trump’s militarized campaign against alleged drug-trafficking boats off South America.

At least 178 people have been killed in US military airstrikes in the Caribbean and Pacific since the offensive began in September, according to a tally by the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola).

The US has provided no evidence that any of the vessels were involved in drug trafficking, and legal experts and rights groups say the attacks amount to extrajudicial killings as they apparently target civilians who do not pose any immediate threat. The White House insists the killings are lawful.

The Don Maca, a 35-ton fishing vessel which worked with six smaller boats, was approximately 200 miles north-west of the Galápagos Islands, when it disappeared on 26 March. About a week earlier, it had departed from Manta, a port city in south-western Ecuador that has become a focal point in the country’s escalating “war on drugs”.

Its 20 crewmen, all from nearby communities including San Mateo, Santa Marianita and Jaramijó, insist they were fishing when they were attacked.

Earlier that day they had seen a military vessel flying US colours, but thought nothing of it. “They did not signal to us, so we just carried on fishing,” said Palacios.

The first drone strike hit the bow of the boat, and the second hit the antenna, knocking out all communications, he said.

Debris from the explosion raked through the crew. One of the fishers, Erick Fabricio Coello Saltos, 27, said his hearing and his vision were both damaged in the blast. “When I heard an explosion, my eardrums ruptured terribly ... I was covered in blood from the shrapnel,” he told Radio Contacto.

The fishers claim drones continued to circle overhead after the blasts, leaving them fearing another strike. Mobile phone footage of the aftermath of the attack shows the terrified crew huddled at the stern of the ship, with an alarm sounding as one of them waves a white shirt. One man appears to be wiping blood from his nose.

Shortly afterwards, the crew say they were approached by a US patrol boat, and were ordered to board.

Palacios says that when onboard the patrol vessel, the crew’s phones were confiscated and most photos and videos of the attacks wiped.

Once the men were on the patrol boat, the US personnel boarded the fishing boat and stole the crew’s food and the beer, Palacios said.

When Palacios looked back at the Don Maca, it was already in flames. “We saw the ship burn,” he said.

The crew of the patrol boat spoke English to each other, and used a translator to address the Ecuadorians. “From the moment we arrived on the US patrol boat, they were pointing guns at us, shouting, ‘Get in, get in,’” said Palacios, 54. “They handcuffed us, put hoods over our heads and pushed us around. We were terrified they were going to kill us.”

According to the crew’s account, they were held for several hours by the US vessel before being transferred to a Salvadorian patrol boat and, after several more days at sea, eventually to El Salvador, where they were taken to a military base and questioned. Later they were handed over to immigration authorities and taken to a United Nations shelter.

Back home, their families conducted a desperate search, frustrated by the silence and lack of official information surrounding their disappearance. The fishers were eventually returned to Ecuador, where they were released without charge.

“Thank God we’re alive! What they did to us was very cruel,” said Palacios, who alleged that the US personnel never attempted to explain or justify the attack.

“They knew we were fishermen. Even the Salvadorian authorities told us things had been handled very badly.”

The Pentagon and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. US Southern Command said it had “no information to provide regarding any US government personnel involvement in any of the incidents” laid out.

A lawyer representing the crew says their account pointed to serious violations of international law.

“A US vessel intercepted them and forced them aboard. Once they were detained, their fishing boat was blown up,” said Fernando Bastias Robayo, a lawyer with the Human Rights Council (CDH). “They were arbitrarily hooded and later abandoned on the Salvadorian coast. Any apprehension followed by incommunicado detention constitutes an enforced disappearance.

“It was a form of psychological torture, not knowing what’s really going to happen to your life and having your face covered,” he adds.

Bastias Robayo said there had been no official response from either Ecuadorian or US authorities.

The claims come amid an intensifying multinational crackdown on drug-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific.

“Since early September we’ve counted 49 attacks,” said Adam Isacson, director for defence oversight at Wola. “The number of boats is higher, because some incidents involve multiple vessels, and our tally of the dead stands at 178. There were five attacks between 11 and 15 April alone.”

Trump has described the situation as an “armed conflict” with Latin American cartels, arguing that such operations are needed to curb the flow of drugs into the United States. The US has insisted its operations are aimed at suspected traffickers moving along established smuggling routes.

However, the administration has released limited evidence to support its claims that those killed were “narcoterrorists”, prompting heated debate over the legality of the operations.

Isacson said that while the US argues it needs a stronger deterrent, “in practice [that] means violating all manner of law and killing people on mere suspicion”.

“The response is always, always, always that intelligence points to narcotrafficking. They don’t offer anything else. They never identify the drug, almost never identify the armed group they suspect them to be working with, and there is never any evidence of drugs being recovered in the water,” Isacson said.

Palacios said the experience had left him questioning the very premise of the war on drugs. “All the presidents claim they’re fighting drug trafficking and organised crime. But they’ve never actually done anything. They’re just trying to make it look like they are – and instead are mistreating innocent people like us fishermen,” he said.

Bastias Robayo says lawyers are also investigating the disappearance of another Ecuadorian fishing vessel, the Fiorella, which has been missing for three months with eight people onboard. A complaint has been filed with the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.

Isacson said that unlike in other attacks, the crew of the Don Maca did not appear to have been the victims of a shoot-to-kill incident, but said the attack should “absolutely be investigated”.

“If there were no drugs aboard those boats, it’s a hugely embarrassing ‘false positive’ for US intelligence at a time when that intelligence is being used to kill people, no questions asked,” he said.

Palacios rejected any suggestion the crew were involved in drug trafficking, arguing that if there had been any evidence to support that claim, they would have been arrested and charged. “If we had been carrying something illegal, we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “We’d be in the United States, in jail.”

For the crew of the Don Maca, the experience has left lasting trauma.

“I get scared in the middle of the night. I can’t sleep well. My ears still hurt,” Palacios said. “I think that’s it for me. I’m done with fishing. Going back out there is impossible. I thought they were going to kill us.”

Other crew members have declined to speak publicly, citing fears of reprisal, said Palacios. “They’re afraid someone will kill us for what happened.”