The U.S. Southern Command announced that it had conducted another strike against a small ship in the eastern Pacific Ocean after a nearly three-week hiatus.
Thursday’s attack is the 22nd that the US military has carried out against ships in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that the Trump administration said were drug smuggling.
Thursday’s strike claimed four lives, with the campaign claiming at least 87 lives, according to a social media post.
“Your wish is our order Andrew. Just sink another narc boat,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a tweet addressed to a Turning Point USA spokesperson.
In the video that accompanied the announcement, a small boat can be seen moving through the water before it is suddenly engulfed in a large explosion. The video then zooms out to show the ship covered in flames and billowing smoke.
The attack was carried out on the same day that Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley appeared at a series of secret closed-door briefings at the US Capitol as lawmakers opened an investigation into the very first strike carried out by the military on 2 September. The session came after news that Bradley had ordered a follow-up attack that killed the survivors to comply with Pete Hegseth’s demands.
Bradley told lawmakers there was no “kill them all” order from Hegseth, but the stark video of the entire series of attacks raised serious questions for some lawmakers.
Legal experts said the killing of strike survivors at sea could be a violation of the laws of military war.
Bradley spoke to lawmakers alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Cain, in a classified meeting. His testimony provided fresh information at a crucial time when Hegseth’s leadership is under scrutiny, but did little to resolve growing questions about the legal basis for President Donald Trump’s extraordinary campaign to use military force against suspected drug smugglers.
Lawmakers offered varying accounts of what they saw on the video.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said he saw survivors “trying to turn a ship loaded with drugs bound for the United States back so they could stay in the fight.”
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, “What I saw in that room was one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”
“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of movement, with a destroyed vessel,” he said, adding that “they were killed by the United States.”
Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the survivors were “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of an overturned and disabled boat, drifting in the water – until the missiles come in and kill them”.
