US attacks on boats continue amid “disturbing” video screening in Congress

According to RCO News Agency, the US military, which has carried out a wave of deadly attacks on boats in the waters of Latin America near Venezuela since September, claiming that in another deadly attack in the eastern Pacific Ocean that left four dead, it targeted a boat belonging to drug traffickers.

According to Al-Arabiya, the US military is accused of violating the laws of armed conflicts and committing extra-legal executions in its alleged campaign in Latin American waters against drug traffickers that left more than 87 dead.

One such attack in early September, in which the US military targeted the wreckage of a previously destroyed boat to kill two survivors of a previous attack, drew strong criticism against US President Donald Trump and his administration’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegst.

After seeing footage of the attack, a senior Democratic US lawmaker said that “shipwrecked sailors” were targeted, while some called it a war crime.

The US Army’s Southern Command claimed in a post on the X social network about the attack on Thursday: “In this new attack, a vessel operated by an organization that has been declared a terrorist was attacked in international waters. The information received confirmed that the vessel was carrying illegal drugs and transiting them on a known route used for drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Attached to this post was a video in which a multi-engine boat was hit by an explosion and engulfed in flames while driving fast in these waters. It was written in this post: “Four terrorist drug smugglers were killed on this vessel.”

U.S. lawmakers watched the full video of the controversial early September attack in a secret session of Congress earlier Thursday, only a short portion of which has been made public.

Jim Hyams, the top Democrat on the US Intelligence Committee, told reporters: “The video showed the US military targeting dead and broken sailors who are bad guys.”

“It was one of the most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen in my entire political career,” Hyams continued. “2 people who were clearly in distress, without any means of transport and their boat was destroyed, were killed by the US.”

Don Bacon, the Republican representative of the US Congress, also told CNN about this criminal attack by the US military: “These two people were trying to survive, and our laws of war do not allow us to kill survivors. According to the law, they had to cause an imminent threat. And I think we can say that they did not pose any imminent threat to our country.”

Meanwhile, both the White House and the Pentagon have tried to exonerate Hogst from the decision to carry out this criminal attack and instead blame it on Admiral Frank Bradley, the commander of the operation.

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