Pentagon faces legal questions after video shows second strike on shipwrecked drug-suspects

When the U.S. military carried out its first strike against a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean on September 2, the attack began with an airburst munition exploding above the 11-member crew like an umbrella of shrapnel.

A video of the attack, shown to U.S. lawmakers on Thursday and described to Reuters by two sources familiar with the imagery, showed smoke clearing and two men, who had somehow lived through the blast, clinging to a severed section of the front of the vessel in a futile effort to survive.

They were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible communications equipment. They also appeared to have no idea what had just hit them, or that the U.S. military was weighing whether to finish them off.

“The video follows them for about an hour as they tried to flip the boat back over. They couldn’t do it,” one source said.

Admiral Frank Bradley, who was the head of the Joint Special Operations Command at the time, concluded that the wreckage was likely being kept afloat because there was cocaine inside and could drift long enough to be recovered, said the sources.

US strikes in Caribbean, Pacific have killed 69

US STRIKES SINCE SEPTEMBER 2025

SEPTEMBER 2 – 11 people were killed in a strike on a vessel allegedly carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela, Trump said. This is the first known operation since his administration deployed warships to the southern Caribbean.

The Venezuelan government later denied any of the 11 victims were members of the Tren de Aragua gang cited by Trump.

SEPTEMBER 15 – Three men were killed in a strike on another alleged Venezuelan drug vessel while in international waters, Trump said, adding it was heading to the U.S. He provided no evidence that the boat was carrying drugs.

SEPTEMBER 19 – Three men were killed in another attack on a vessel allegedly carrying drugs, Trump said.

OCTOBER 3 – Four people were killed in a strike against another vessel allegedly carrying drugs, just off the Venezuelan coast, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.

OCTOBER 14 – Six people were killed in another strike off Venezuela’s coast, Trump said, alleging they were drug traffickers.

OCTOBER 16 – Two people were killed in another strike in the Caribbean. This marked the first case with survivors, a Colombian and an Ecuadorean, who were swiftly returned to their home countries.

Colombia said its national would be “processed according to the law.” Ecuador said it has no evidence to detain its citizen and he has been released.

OCTOBER 17 – Three people were killed in a strike. Colombian President Gustavo Petro disputed Hegseth’s claim the boat belonged to the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, saying it was the property of a “humble family.” The ELN has also rejected Hegseth’s claim.

OCTOBER 21 – Five people were killed in strikes against two vessels in the eastern Pacific, Hegseth said, alleging they were drug smugglers. The strike was the first known U.S. military operation in the Pacific since Trump’s administration kicked off its new anti-drug campaign.

OCTOBER 24 – Six people were killed in the Caribbean, Hegseth said, alleging the vessel was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.

OCTOBER 27 – Fourteen people were killed in three U.S. strikes against vessels the U.S. alleged transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific, which left one survivor. Mexican authorities took over the search-and-rescue operation for the lone survivor, Hegseth said.

Four days later, Mexico’s Navy said it was suspending the search operation.

OCTOBER 29 – Four men were killed in a strike in the eastern Pacific, Hegseth said, alleging it was a drug vessel.

NOVEMBER 1 – Three men were killed aboard a vessel in the Caribbean, Hegseth said, saying it was operated by a drug trafficking organization.

NOVEMBER 4– Two men were killed in international waters in the Eastern Pacific, in what Hegseth said was a suspected drug trafficking vessel.

NOVEMBER 6– Three men were killed in a strike on a vessel in international waters in the Caribbean, Hegseth said, alleging the vessel was operated by a “designated terrorist organization.”

So Bradley decided that, in order to complete the mission assigned by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and neutralize the threat posed by the drug boat, he would need to attack the vessel again.

The video showed three additional munitions being fired at the damaged vessel, said the sources.

“You could see their faces, bodies… Then boom, boom, boom,” the first source said.

The video was shown behind closed doors on Capitol Hill by Bradley and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The reactions of the lawmakers who viewed it split along party lines, with Democrats voicing distress but Republicans defending the strike as legal.

It was the first of 22 attacks on drug vessels carried out by the U.S. military as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. The strikes have killed 87 people, with one carried out in the eastern Pacific on Thursday.

“I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight,” said Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He said Bradley and Hegseth did exactly what was expected of them.

But Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters after the briefing it was “one of the most troubling things” he had seen.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by the video and said it should be released to the public.

The Defense Department’s Law of War Manual forbids attacks on combatants who are incapacitated, unconscious or shipwrecked, as long as they abstain from hostilities and do notattempt to escape. The manual cites firing upon shipwreck survivors as an example of a “clearly illegal” order that should be refused.

However, the United States has framed the attacks as a war with drug cartels, calling them armed groups, and says the drugs being carried to the United States kill Americans.