The U.S. military allegedly carried out a second strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean after an initial attack left two survivors, according to multiple reports.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal directive to the special operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 strike to “kill everybody” on the vessel, a person familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
According to the source, a missile tore through the waters off Trinidad, hitting the vessel and setting it ablaze. Commanders watched the boat burn on a live drone feed for several minutes, but were later surprised to see two survivors holding onto the burning wreckage.
To follow Hegseth’s directive, the special ops commander then ordered a second strike, which sent both men tumbling into the water. The strike sank the vessel and killed the remaining crew, bringing the death toll linked to that attack to 11.
Even though Trump took to his social media platform on Sept. 2 to announce the strike that had killed 11 “terrorists [who] were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics,” his administration had never acknowledged killing any survivors.
Some experts say the alleged “double-tap” strike may violate the law of armed conflict, which forbids targeting an enemy combatant who’s out of the fight due to injury or surrender.
“They’re breaking the law either way,” Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst at the Crisis Group think tank who served as associate general counsel at the Pentagon, told CNN. “They’re killing civilians in the first place, and then if you assume they’re combatants, it’s also unlawful — under the law of armed conflict, if somebody is ‘hors de combat’ and no longer able to fight, then they have to be treated humanely.”
In the weeks following that attack, more than 80 alleged drug smugglers have been killed in at least 22 similar attacks, which the White House has justified by saying the U.S. was in a “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations.”
Critics say the president’s justifications may violate both international and U.S. law.
“All available evidence suggests that President Trump’s lethal strikes in the Caribbean constitute murder, pure and simple,” Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said last month.
With News Wire Services