US President Donald Trump said he would investigate claims of a lethal follow-up strike in the Caribbean. Photo / US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth's X Account, AFP
A United States admiral acting under the authority of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the “double-tap” military operation that targeted survivors of an initial attack on an alleged drug smuggling boat, the White House said today.
A total of 11 people were killed in the two strikes - the first group of more than 80 left dead in what has become a months-long campaign against alleged drug-runners that experts say amount to extrajudicial killings.
US President Donald Trump’s Administration insists it is effectively at war with alleged “narco-terrorists”, and the White House said Admiral Frank Bradley, who leads US Special Operations Command, had acted legally and properly in ordering the second strike on the survivors.
Bradley “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists.
Hegseth “authorised Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes”, she said.
US media reported last weekend that an initial September 2 strike left alive two people who were killed in a subsequent attack to fulfil an order from Hegseth.
Trump announced at the time that 11 alleged members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were killed in what he described as “a kinetic strike”.
Subsequent strikes that left survivors were followed by search-and-rescue efforts that recovered two people in one case and failed to find another later in October.
Hegseth has insisted that the strikes are legal, saying in a recent post on X that the military action is “in compliance with the law of armed conflict - and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command”.
However, the military action on September 2 would appear to run afoul of the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual, which states: “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal”.
Trump has deployed the world’s biggest aircraft carrier and an array of other military assets to the Caribbean, insisting they are there for counter-narcotics operations.
Regional tensions have flared as a result of the strikes and the military build-up, with Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro accusing Washington of using drug-trafficking as a pretext for “imposing regime change” in Caracas.
Maduro, whose re-election last year was rejected by Washington as fraudulent, insists there is no drug cultivation in Venezuela, which he says is used as a trafficking route for Colombian cocaine against its will.
Trump earlier said he would “look into” claims the military conducted a follow-up strike that killed survivors.
“The order was to kill everybody,” one of the sources told the Washington Post.
Trump defended Hegseth, arguing the reports were false.
“I’m going to find out about it, but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” the President told reporters aboard Air Force One yesterday.
When asked if he would have wanted a second attempt to kill the survivors, Trump said: “We’ll look into it, but no, I wouldn’t have wanted that – not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal.”
Hegseth has dismissed the reports as “fake news”.
Trump confirmed that he had recently spoken with Maduro.
“I wouldn’t say it went well or badly. It was a phone call,” Trump said.
The New York Times reported that Trump and Maduro had discussed a possible meeting, while The Wall Street Journal said that the conversation also included conditions of amnesty if Maduro were to step down.
Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin said yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union talk show that the US has offered Maduro the chance to leave his country for Russia or elsewhere.
Though Trump has not publicly threatened to use force against Maduro, he said in recent days that efforts to halt Venezuelan drug-trafficking “by land” would begin “very soon”.
Venezuela says it has requested assistance from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), of which it is a member, to help “stop this [American] aggression, which is being readied with more and more force”.
The request came in a letter from Maduro to the group, read by Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez, who is also Venezuela’s oil minister, during a virtual meeting of Opec ministers.
Washington “is trying to seize Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the biggest in the world, by using military force”, Maduro wrote in the letter.
Since September, US air strikes have targeted alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least 83 people.
Trump’s Administration has offered no concrete evidence to back up the allegations of drug-trafficking behind the campaign, and numerous experts have questioned the legality of the operations.
The head of Venezuela’s legislature, Jorge Rodriguez, said he met relatives of Venezuelans killed in the strikes.
When asked about the report about Hegseth’s order, he said: “If a war had been declared and led to such killings, we would be talking about war crimes”.
“Given that no war has been declared, what happened ... can only be characterised as murder or extrajudicial executions.”
Six airlines have cancelled services to Venezuela, but yesterday, the airport in Caracas was functioning as usual.
- Agence France-Presse