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Democrats' responses to reported strike
Senator Mark Kelly: “We’re going to have a public hearing. We’re going to put these folks under oath. And we’re going to find out what happened. And then, there needs to be accountability.”
He also told CNN: “If what has been reported is accurate, I have got serious concerns about anybody in that chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over.”
Senator Chris Van Hollen: “I think it’s very possible there was a war crime committee.”
Frances Mao
And a quick reminder of the background to US strikes in these waters:
Since September, the US has expanded its naval presence in the region, carrying out strikes on what it says are drug-smuggling boats in waters off Venezuela and Colombia.
More than 80 people have been killed according to the US Defence Department.
The US has said it is destroying boats bringing in harmful drugs, and thus its attacks are launched out of self-defence – a legal justification for military attacks under international laws of armed conflict.
But it has provided scant evidence of the alleged criminality of the boats, and has also declined to provide identification details of the people it has killed on board the boats.
The UN’s human rights chief Volker Turk has said there’s “strong evidence” such strikes constitute extrajudicial killings. He’s been calling for Congress investigate.
The reports then from the weekend add another layer of suspected illegality. The Washington Post reports that the US navy on 2 September struck a drug-running vessel, killing some of the 11 on board in the first strike. After commanders saw on the live drone feed that there were still two survivors clinging to the wreck, they executed an order to strike again, to kill all those on board.
Follow-up strikes are forbidden under the rules of war and engagement, i.e. what is legal fighting between parties in a conflict.
Clauses in the the Geneva Conventions also forbid the targeting of wounded participants, saying that those participants should instead be shielded, rescued and if applicable, treated as prisoners of war with relevant rights.
Republican-led committees launching investigations
There’s been a swift response from lawmakers following the reports. Republican-led committees overseeing the Pentagon have vowed to conduct “vigorous oversight” into the boat strikes.
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Senate Armed Services Committee:“Has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances”.
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House Armed Services Committee: “Is taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question”.
And lawmakers on both sides, speaking on talk shows on Sunday, called for congressional review.
“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Democrat Senator Tim Kaine on CBS’s Face the Nation programme.
Republican lawmaker Mike Turner said Congress did not know yet if the report of the follow-up strike was true.
“Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” said Turner, a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
Trump 'wouldn't have wanted' second strike on Caribbean boat
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One yesterday, the president defended Hegseth, saying he believed his statement “100%” that he hadn’t ordered the second strike.
“I’m going to find out about it, but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.”
When asked if he would have wanted a second attempt to kill the survivors, the president said:
We’ll look into it, but no, I wouldn’t have wanted that – not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal.”
The Washington Post reported that Hegseth “gave a spoken directive” to “kill everybody” on board in September. When there were still two men left after the first strike, a Special Operations commander ordered the follow-up to comply with Hegseth’s direction, the newspaper reported.
Hegseth has strongly denied the report, calling it “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory”.
He also said the US’s strikes on boats so far in the Caribbean had been “lawful under both US and international law”.
Welcome: Trump backs Hegseth amid report of repeated strike on boat
Good morning and welcome to our US politics live blog.
We’re straight back in the thick of it after Thanksgiving: lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding answers from the Trump administration after reports defense secretary Peter Hegseth ordered a double-tap strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat off the coast of Venezuela, killing two people on board who had survived the first blast.
The allegations, first reported in the Washington Post on Friday, have sparked calls from Congress for an immediate investigation.
Hegseth, who calls himself the secretary for war on X, has called it “fake news” and Donald Trump says he believes him.
But Congress is alarmed. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers raised concerns at the weekend that if the reports were true, such attacks would be war crimes.
