US admiral ordered follow-up strike on alleged drug boat from Venezuela, says White House

WASHINGTON - The admiral who leads US Special Operations Command ordered a follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat earlier in 2025, the White House said on Dec 1, defending the decision to target survivors of an initial attack.

Admiral Frank 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.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth “authorised Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” she said.

The two strikes took place on Sept 2
– the first in what has become a months-long campaign of attacks on alleged drug-running boats that experts say amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers.

US media reported last week that an initial Sept 2 strike left two people alive who were killed in a subsequent attack to fulfill an order from Mr Hegseth.

US President Donald Trump announced at the time that 11 alleged “narcoterrorists” were killed in “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.

Mr Hegseth has also 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.”

Mr Trump has deployed the world’s biggest aircraft 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 buildup, with Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro accusing Washington of using drug trafficking as a pretext for “imposing regime change” in Caracas.

Mr Maduro, whose re-election in 2024 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. AFP