Video shows final, confused moments of survivors of US boat strike in Caribbean
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The video of the Sept 2 strike against a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean was shown on Capitol Hill by Admiral Frank Bradley (middle row, left), head of the Joint Special Operations Command at the time, and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Dan Caine (right).
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON – When the US military carried out its first strike against a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean on Sept 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 American lawmakers on Dec 4 and described by two sources familiar with the imagery, showed smoke clearing and two men, who 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 just hit them, or that the US 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, 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.
So Adm Bradley decided that – to complete the mission assigned by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and neutralise 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 Adm Bradley and General Dan Caine, 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 US military as part of the Trump administration’s campaign
A screengrab of a video showing US military forces sinking a boat suspected of carrying narcotics in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Oct 21, 2025.
PHOTO: AFP
“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 Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.
He said Adm Bradley and Mr Hegseth did exactly what was expected of them.
But Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the committee, told reporters after the briefing that it was “one of the most troubling things” he has seen.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by the video, adding that it should be released to the public.
The Defence 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 not attempt to escape. The manual cites firing upon shipwreck survivors as an example of a “clearly illegal” order that should be refused.
However, the US 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. REUTERS
