U.S. Military Conducts Strike On Another Suspected Drug Boat As Probe Into The First Strike Begins | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Southern Command introduced that it had performed one other strike towards a small boat within the japanese Pacific Ocean on Thursday, following a pause of just about three weeks.

It is the twenty second strike the U.S. army has carried out towards boats within the Caribbean Sea and japanese Pacific Ocean that the Trump administration claimed had been trafficking medicine.

There had been 4 casualties in Thursday’s strike, based on the social media publish, bringing the dying toll of the marketing campaign to at the least 87 individuals.

In a video that accompanied the announcement, a small boat might be seen transferring throughout the water earlier than it’s abruptly consumed by a big explosion. The video then zooms out to point out the boat coated in flames and billowing smoke.

The strike was performed the identical day Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley appeared for a collection of closed-door categorized briefings on the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers started an investigation into the very first strike carried out by the army on Sept. 2. The classes got here after a report that Bradley ordered a follow-on assault that killed the survivors to adjust to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s calls for.

Bradley instructed lawmakers there was no “kill them all” order from Hegseth, however a stark video of the complete collection of assaults left some lawmakers with severe questions.

Legal consultants have mentioned killing survivors of a strike at sea might be a violation of the legal guidelines of army warfare.

Bradley spoke to lawmakers alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, in a categorized session. His testimony offered recent info at an important second as Hegseth’s management comes beneath scrutiny, but it surely did little to resolve rising questions in regards to the authorized foundation for President Donald Trump’s extraordinary marketing campaign to make use of battle powers towards suspected drug smugglers.

Lawmakers supplied differing accounts of what they noticed on the video.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas mentioned he noticed the survivors “trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for United States back over so they could stay in the fight.”

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the highest Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, mentioned, “What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”

“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel,” he mentioned, including they “were killed by the United States.”

Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the highest Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, mentioned the survivors had been “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water — until the missiles come and kill them.”