Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth is declining to touch upon a report that he ordered the navy to kill all passengers aboard a ship suspected of ferrying medicine within the Caribbean Sea in September.
In keeping with The Washington Submit, the Sept. 2 boat strike initially left two survivors clinging to the boat. The Submit says Adm. Mitch Bradley, head of Particular Operations Command, then ordered a second strike so as to adjust to Hegseth’s orders and to make sure the survivors could not name on different traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.
If true, it’s unclear why Bradley would not have ordered troops to gather the survivors and their cargo from the water, because the navy did in a subsequent strike when two survivors have been taken aboard a Navy ship through helicopter. These survivors have been later repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia, though some authorized consultants mentioned the survivors may have been prosecuted in federal court docket for smuggling narcotics.
SOCOM additionally declined to touch upon the report.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives to transient Senators on US navy exercise within the Caribbean and Pacific, on the US Capitol in Washington, November 5, 2025.
Mandel Ngan/AFP through Getty Photographs
One individual acquainted with particulars of the Sept. 2 incident confirmed to ABC Information that there have been survivors from an preliminary strike on the boat and that these survivors have been killed in subsequent strikes. ABC Information has not confirmed, although, the specifics of orders from Hegseth or Bradley.
“The Division has no response to this text and declines to remark additional,” a Pentagon spokesperson mentioned Friday.
Critics of the Trump administration and a few authorized consultants have questioned the legality of the strikes. Below the Geneva Conventions, wounded or sick combatants are to be collected and cared for by both aspect in a battle.
There have been greater than 20 airstrikes towards vessels within the Caribbean and the japanese Pacific, killing greater than 80 individuals.
Trump and his high advisers say U.S. intelligence clearly reveals that the boats are smuggling unlawful narcotics. They argue the strikes are authorized as a result of Trump has designated drug cartels as “overseas terrorist organizations.”
Many authorized consultants say that line of considering, although, is unprecedented and say the U.S. must be counting on regulation enforcement — not the navy — to grab shipments and arrest suspected criminals.
