{"id":326137,"date":"2025-12-05T02:47:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T02:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326137\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T02:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T02:47:07","slug":"pentagon-announces-it-has-killed-four-men-in-another-boat-strike-in-pacific-us-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326137\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon announces it has killed four men in another boat strike in Pacific | US military"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military<\/a> 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<\/a> by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth<\/a>, 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

The latest strike was the first 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 with military strikes, with US lawmakers promising to investigate<\/a> 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 the 2 September 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 about an attack on Signal, but such an effort is unlikely to succeed.<\/p>\n

The US admiral who commanded the attack told lawmakers<\/a> on Thursday that there was no such order to kill everyone aboard. Still, Jim Himes, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, described the footage of the September 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<\/a>.<\/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

Since September, the US military says it has conducted 22 strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs, and killed almost 86 people.<\/p>\n

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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<\/a> 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<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is manifestly unlawful to kill someone who\u2019s been shipwrecked.\u201d<\/p>\n

More details soon \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-326137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}