The US Senate Armed Services Committee has pledged to investigate the alleged incident
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has sharply criticized the Washington Post following its report that he had instructed military units to “kill everybody” on a suspected drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean in early September.
Senior members of the US Senate Armed Services Committee have stated their intention to examine the alleged incident.
In recent months, the US has deployed more than a dozen warships and approximately 15,000 military personnel off the Venezuelan coast as part of Operation Southern Spear, which is reportedly aimed at “narcoterrorists.”
US President Donald Trump has not dismissed the possibility of military action in the South American nation. Caracas has repeatedly rejected any involvement with drug traffickers.
In a post on X on Saturday, Hegseth stated that “as usual, the fake news is publishing more manufactured, provocative, and disparaging reports to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
He did not explicitly reject the claims, asserting that “these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be lethal, kinetic strikes.”
“Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization,” he further stated.
In a report published earlier on Saturday, the Washington Post, referencing unnamed sources “with direct knowledge of the operation,” reported that Hegseth issued the command to “kill everybody” on a vessel destroyed on September 2. The assault reportedly resulted in the deaths of all eleven individuals aboard.
The newspaper also stated that since that time, the US military has struck a minimum of 22 more vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, resulting in the deaths of an additional 71 suspected drug smugglers.
Late on Friday, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican Senator Roger Wicker, released a statement jointly with Democratic members of the committee, declaring that they “view with gravity the accounts of follow-on strikes on vessels alleged to be transporting illicit drugs in the SOUTHCOM region and are undertaking bipartisan measures to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the operation in question.”
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, US President Trump announced the “airspace above and surrounding Venezuela as completely closed.”
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry has described Trump’s statement as a “colonialist threat.”