US military carried out second strike killing survivors on a suspected drug boat that had already been attacked, sources say
The US military carried out a follow–up strike on a suspected drug vessel operating in the Caribbean on September 2 after an initial attack did not kill everyone on board, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
That September strike was the first in what became a regular series of attacks on alleged drug boats.
While the first strike appeared to disable the boat and cause deaths, the military assessed there were survivors, according to the sources. The second attack killed the remaining crew on board, bringing the total death toll to 11, and sunk the ship.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered the military prior to the operation to ensure the strike killed everyone on board, but it’s not clear if he knew there were survivors prior to the second strike, one of the sources said.
The strike and deaths were announced by President Donald Trump on the day of the attacks, but the administration has never publicly acknowledged killing survivors.
Trump said on Thursday that action on land to stop suspected drug trafficking networks in Venezuela could “start very soon,” amid ongoing questions about the legality of the US military’s campaign around Latin America. Officials have acknowledged not knowing the identities of everyone on board the boats before they are struck, CNN has reported.
“I have been alarmed by the number of vessels that this administration has taken out without a single consultation of Congress,” Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean told CNN this week. “Just last week, I took a look in a SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility], because I’m a member of foreign affairs, at some documents around the sinking of these vessels and the murder of the people on those boats. Nowhere in there was there evidence of what was going on.”
People briefed on the “double-tap” strike, said they were concerned that it could violate the law of armed conflict, which prohibits the execution of an enemy combatant who is “hors de combat,” or taken out of the fight due to injury or surrender.
“They’re breaking the law either way,” said Sarah Harrison, a former associate general counsel at the Pentagon who now serves as a senior analyst at the Crisis Group think tank. “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.”
Details of the strikes were first reported by The Intercept and the Washington Post.
The US military was aware that there were survivors in the water following the first strike on September 2 and carried out another to both sink the vessel and kill the remaining crew, the sources said. Pentagon officials told lawmakers in briefings afterward that the second strike was done to sink the boat so it would not pose a threat to navigation, the sources said.
The US military has hit boats multiple times in several instances to sink them, the sources said, but the September 2 strike is the only known instance where the military deliberately killed survivors.
It is not clear why the survivors were not picked up, as they were following another strike in the Caribbean in October. In that instance, the Trump administration rescued two survivors and repatriated them to their home countries.
In a post announcing the September 2 strike on Truth Social, President Donald Trump said that the US military had conducted “a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility.”
The administration has tried to legally justify its strikes on the boats by claiming they are carrying individuals linked to roughly two dozen drug cartels engaged in an armed conflict with the US. The White House has said repeatedly that the administration’s actions “comply fully with the Law of Armed Conflict,” the area of international law that is designed to prevent attacks on civilians.
Many legal experts, however, say the suspected drug traffickers are civilians, not combatants, and that the strikes therefore amount to extrajudicial killings.
Before the US military began blowing up boats in September, countering illicit drug trafficking was handled by law enforcement and the US Coast Guard, and cartel members and drug smugglers were treated as criminals with due process rights.
But in a classified legal opinion produced over the summer, the Justice Department argued that the president is legally allowed to authorize lethal strikes against 24 cartels and criminal organizations in self-defense, because the groups pose an imminent threat to Americans, CNN has reported.
That argument has potentially been undercut by the behavior of the suspected traffickers who have been targeted: in at least one instance, a boat had turned around and was moving away from the US before being struck. Survivors of the strike on September 2 also posed no imminent threat, since they were effectively incapacitated, the sources briefed on the strikes and Harrison noted.
Senior US defense officials and US allies have expressed skepticism of the legality of the military campaign. The commander of US Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, offered to leave his post during a tense meeting last month with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after he raised questions about the legality of the strikes, CNN has reported. Holsey will leave his post in December, just one year into his tenure as the SOUTHCOM chief.
Lawyers specializing in international law within DoD’s Office of General Counsel have also raised concerns about the legality of the strikes. Multiple current and former uniformed lawyers told CNN that the strikes do not appear lawful.
The United Kingdom is also no longer sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in US military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal, CNN has reported.
