\n<\/p>\n
The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks.<\/p>\n
Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, \u201cJoint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n
The footage showed a large explosion suddenly overtaking a small boat as it moved through the water, followed by an image of a vessel in flames and dark smoke streaming overhead.<\/p>\n
It is the 22nd strike the US military has carried out against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people since September, when the strikes began.<\/p>\n
chart<\/p>\n
The first publicly announced strike in nearly three weeks, it comes as the Pentagon and the White House have struggled to answer questions about the legal basis for the campaign to kill suspected drug smugglers. US lawmakers have promised to investigate the first such attack, in September, in which two survivors clinging to wreckage were killed in a follow-on strike.<\/p>\n
Hegseth has faced increasing scrutiny over that strike following a report from the Washington Post that the defense secretary had verbally directed the military to \u201ckill them all\u201d. On Thursday, a Democratic lawmaker introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth, pointing to the boat strike and a report that found he broke rules by sharing information on Slack about another military attack, but such an effort is unlikely to succeed.<\/p>\n
The US admiral who commanded the 2 September attack told lawmakers on Thursday that there was no such order to kill everyone onboard the vessel. Still, Jim Himes, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, described the footage of the strike, which reportedly showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage, as \u201cone of the most troubling things I\u2019ve seen in my time in public service\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel,\u201d Himes said.<\/p>\n
Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, disagreed, saying the footage showed \u201ctwo survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs, bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight\u201d and that nearby \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d may have been coming to rescue them.<\/p>\n
Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor and former Pentagon lawyer, scoffed at Cotton\u2019s interpretation. \u201cI\u2019d love to know how Senator Cotton \u2026 was able to detect these shipwrecked people were trying to \u2018stay in the fight\u2019 versus clinging to dear life in an effort to survive,\u201d Goodman wrote on Bluesky.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cEven if you buy all the legal falsehoods (that this is an \u2018armed conflict\u2019, that drugs are war-sustaining objects), the two shipwrecked were in no way, shape or form engaged in \u2018active combat activities\u2019 (the actual legal test),\u201d Goodman added.<\/p>\n The administration has argued the US is at war with drug traffickers and that such strikes are legal under the rules of war, but most legal experts reject that rationale.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if we buy into their framing that the individuals on these vessels are combatants, it would still be unlawful to kill them if they are hors de combat, which means they\u2019re incapacitated,\u201d Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Cardozo law school and a former legal adviser to the state department, told the Guardian this week.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is manifestly unlawful to kill someone who\u2019s been shipwrecked.\u201d<\/p>\n Quick Guide<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Show<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.<\/p>\n If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods.<\/p>\n Secure Messaging in the Guardian app<\/strong><\/p>\n The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.<\/p>\n If you don’t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS\/Android) and go to the menu. Select \u2018Secure Messaging\u2019. <\/p>\n SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post<\/strong><\/p>\n If you can safely use the Tor network without being observed or monitored, you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform.<\/p>\n Finally, our guide at theguardian.com\/tips\u00a0lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each.\u00a0<\/p>\n Illustration: Guardian Design \/ Rich Cousins<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks. Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1631,7248,632,1329,744,4634,1230,1349],"class_list":{"0":"post-36226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-announces","9":"tag-boat","10":"tag-killed","11":"tag-men","12":"tag-military","13":"tag-pacific","14":"tag-pentagon","15":"tag-strike"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Contact us about this story<\/h4>\n