The Washington Post first reported details<\/a> about the second strike, which has led to concern from both Democrat and Republican lawmakers.<\/p>\nIn response to a reporter’s question during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Hegseth said that he watched the first strike “live” but quickly moved on to another meeting.<\/p>\n
“I did not personally see survivors,” Hegseth said of the first strike. “That thing was on fire and it exploded… you can’t see anything. This is called the fog of war.”<\/p>\n
He added that he learned of Admiral Bradley’s “correct decision” to sink the boat “a couple of hours later”.<\/p>\n
“We have his back,” Hegseth said of Bradley.<\/p>\n
President Trump, for his part, also defended Adm Bradley, although he distanced himself from his decision to strike the vessel a second time, saying that “we didn’t know about” the follow-on strike.<\/p>\n
“And I can say this: I want those boats taken out,” Trump added.<\/p>\n
More than 80 people have been killed in a wave of similar strikes across the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since early September.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the strikes as a necessary self-defence measure to save American lives from illicit drugs.<\/p>\n
Watch: “I did not personally see survivors”, Hegseth says of second deadly boat strike<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Trump claimed that the strikes have led to a massive reduction in drug trafficking through maritime routes, although he did not provide evidence.<\/p>\n
US lawmakers from both sides of the political spectrum have expressed unease about the 2 September incident, with the Senate Armed Services committee vowing over the weekend to conduct “vigorous oversight” to determine what occurred.<\/p>\n
Adm Bradley – who was commander of the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike – is expected to appear on Capitol Hill this week. <\/p>\n
He is now overall commander of US Special Operations Command, having been promoted a month after the 2 September incident.<\/p>\n
The Geneva Convention forbids the intentional targeting of wounded combatants, saying that those participants should be apprehended and given medical aid. <\/p>\n
Several experts who spoke to the BBC expressed doubts that the reported follow-up strike could be considered legal under international law. <\/p>\n
Since the 2 September strike, the US has significantly expanded its military presence in the region, with Trump again on Tuesday vowing to “start doing those strikes on land”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bernd Debusmann Jrat the White House Getty Images Defence secretary Pete Hegseth says that he watched the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-171828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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