The United States Department of Defense defended on Friday the legality of its first bombing of a vessel with alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean, where it attacked the boat again to kill two survivors, according to U.S. media. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asserted that their current operations in the Pacific and the Caribbean, where U.S. forces have killed at least 83 people by bombing over 20 boats since September, «are legal under U.S. and international law». «These highly effective attacks are specifically intended to be ‘lethal kinetic bombings’. The stated intent is to curb lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narcoterrorists who are poisoning the American people,» Hegseth posted on social media. His statements come after reports from the Washington Post and CNN that in the first attack, which occurred on September 1, the U.S. Armed Forces, after launching a first missile, realized that two crew members were clinging to wreckage in the water, so they attacked again to finish them off. The commander in charge of the operation, according to reports, ordered the second attack to comply with Secretary Hegseth's instructions, who had ordered «to kill everyone» on the boat, in which a total of 11 people died. This attack on September 1 is «the only known case where the military deliberately killed survivors,» according to sources cited by the media. But Hegseth maintained that «every trafficker they kill is affiliated with a designated terrorist organization,» so he called the current press reports «fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory». This was the first in a series of U.S. attacks against boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, amid the growing tension between Venezuela and the United States, which on November 16 moved its largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to the region. Additionally, Washington declared on Monday a organization it calls the Sun Cartel and links to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as a terrorist.
