The US military said it killed four men in a strike on a suspected drug vessel in international waters in the Eastern Pacific on Thursday.
"Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific," the US military said in a statement on X/Twitter.
Senior Democratic lawmakers briefed on a US strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean said on Thursday they were troubled by a video showing survivors in distress being killed, though Republican lawmakers there defended the strike as legal.
The incident under scrutiny is a September 2 attack by the US military that struck a vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 suspected drug traffickers. The initial strike left survivors, who were killed in a subsequent strike, prompting critics to ask whether the operation violated laws and whether US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was responsible for it.
Hegseth has already come under fire this year after a Pentagon investigation faulted him for using Signal on his personal device to send sensitive information about planned strikes in Yemen.
New York Times sues Pentagon over press access
The New York Times sued the US Department of Defense and Hegseth on Thursday in an effort to force the Pentagon to abandon its restrictive new press policy, the latest attempt by a US news organization to reclaim access to government spaces.
The press policy, enacted last month, requires journalists to acknowledge that they could be branded security risks and have their Pentagon press badges revoked if they ask department employees to disclose classified or certain unclassified information.