WASHINGTON: Lawmakers from both parties said Sunday they support congressional reviews of US military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a Sept. 2 attack.
The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.
“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no long able to fight, said Congress does not have information that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.
“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.
Turner said there are concerns in Congress about the attacks on vessels that the Trump administration says are transporting drugs, but the allegations regarding the Sept. 2 attack “is completely outside anything that has been discussed with Congress and there is an ongoing investigation.”
The comments from lawmakers during news show appearance come as the administration escalates a campaign to combat drug trafficking into the US On Saturday, Republican President Donald Trump said the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela should be considered as “closed in its entirety,” an assertion that raised more questions about the US pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Maduro’s government accused Trump of making a “colonial threat” and seeking to undermine the South American country’s sovereignty.
After the Post’s report, Hegseth said Friday on X that “fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
“Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both US and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict— and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command,” Hegseth wrote.
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
That was followed Saturday with the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”
“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Rogers and Smith said, referring to US Southern Command.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, asked about the Sept. 2 attack, said Hegseth deserves a chance to present his side.
“We should get to the truth. I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, kill everybody, kill the survivors because that’s a clear violation of the law of war,” Bacon said. “So, I’m very suspicious that he would’ve done something like that because it would go against common sense.”
Kaine and Turner appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” and Bacon was on ABC’s “This Week.”
Lawmakers voice support for congressional reviews of Trump’s military strikes on boats
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Lawmakers voice support for congressional reviews of Trump’s military strikes on boats
- Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both US and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict: Hegseth
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
