Category World News

The United States military allegedly disguised one of its aircraft as a civilian plane to attack a suspected drug smuggling boat coming from Venezuela, according to a report in The New York Times.

In an article published late on Monday, the newspaper noted that the incident raises questions about the possible commission of a war crime.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House following the publication of the report.

The article focuses on the first known attack in the boat-bombing campaign President Donald Trump launched on September 2 in the southern Caribbean Sea.

At the time, Trump announced on his platform Truth Social that the initial attack killed 11 people, whom he accused of being “narcoterrorists”.

But the New York Times report suggests the plane used in the military operation was painted to look like a civilian vessel, with its missiles tucked away in the fuselage, instead of instead of being carried visibly under its wings.

Such an act of disguise could be considered a war crime under the laws governing armed conflict, the article said.

The newspaper quoted a retired deputy judge advocate general for the US Air Force, Major General Steven Lepper, as saying the concealment of military insignia and weaponry could constitute an act of “perfidy”, a deceptive tactic forbidden under international law.

“Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy,” Lepper told the Times. “If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity.”

The report did not say who ordered the military plane to be disguised.

But three sources told The New York Times that “it was painted in the usual military grey and lacked military markings”. Still, its transponder was transmitting a military tail number.

The report, if true, offers new details that complicate the narrative around the Trump administration’s boat-bombing campaign and the inaugural September 2 strike.

The Trump administration has repeatedly argued that attacking the boats is necessary to prevent illicit drugs from reaching US shores from South America.

In a memo to Congress, Trump also indicated that he considers the US to be in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, whom he described as unlawful combatants.

However, there is no legal basis for such a determination, and drug trafficking is considered a criminal offence, not equivalent to an armed attack.

Human rights experts, including at the United Nations, have also characterised the attacks as an act of extrajudicial killing and a violation of international law.

In describing the September 2 attack, Trump accused the targets of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organisation “operating under the control” of Venezuela’s then-President Nicolas Maduro.

The US military earlier this month abducted Maduro and brought him to New York to face criminal charges related to drug trafficking.

A brief 29-second video accompanied Trump’s announcement of the attack, showing a boat engulfed in a single blast.

But in December, The Washington Post reported that the attack had instead been a “double tap”, with US Navy Admiral Frank Bradley allegedly authorising a second missile blast to kill two previously unreported survivors.

That reporting likewise raised concerns that a war crime had taken place, as it is considered illegal to attack shipwrecked adversaries even in a wartime context.

The new report from The New York Times raises further questions about that “double-tap” strike, including whether the survivors might have saved themselves had the aeroplane’s military markings been visible.

The sources told the Times that the aircraft swooped in low enough for the people on board the boat to see it.

“Two survivors of the initial attack later appeared to wave” at the disguised aircraft while clinging to wreckage, the Times reported. The second strike then killed them.

The newspaper contrasted their reactions to those of survivors in a later attack on October 16.

The initial blast in that October attack likewise left two survivors – but those survivors swam away after the first strike hit. They were later retrieved from the water and repatriated to their home countries, Colombia and Ecuador.

Members of Congress have been shown an extended video of the September 2 attack, and the Times reported that questions about perfidy were privately raised during closed-door briefings with military leaders.

“US military manuals about the law of war discuss perfidy at length, saying it includes when a combatant feigns civilian status so the adversary ‘neglects to take precautions which are otherwise necessary’,” the Times said.

The newspaper, however, pointed out that the US military has switched to clearly marked military aircraft, including MQ-9 Reaper drones, to conduct subsequent boat strikes after the September 2 attack.

It also quoted Trump administration officials as defending the military actions as well within the US government’s legal authority. The Trump administration has denied taking any illegal actions at any point in the boat-bombing campaign.

Every evening around 8pm, Faisal Khan locks himself inside his small hostel room at East West Medical College in Nishat Nagar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

If there is a knock on the door, he pauses before opening it, listening carefully first for familiar voices.

Outside the campus, he avoids crowded tea stalls and markets. He does not speak Bangla fluently, and he knows that his accent could give him away as an Indian – an identity he desperately wants to mask these days, if he can.

Khan came to Bangladesh in April 2024 from his home in Nuh in the northern Indian state of Haryana, after failing to secure a government medical seat in India. At the time, Dhaka felt welcoming. He would go out with classmates, eat at restaurants, and travel outside the college on weekends.

“Those outings helped me release the stress of studies,” Khan said. But in July 2024, when protests erupted against then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government, his routine changed. Fearing that the environment outside was no longer safe, Khan confined himself to his small room.

The college advised him and other Indian students to remain within the campus premises. It has stayed that way since then. Khan says he feels trapped, and the city that once felt like a second home no longer offers a sense of safety.

He is among more than 9,000 Indian medical students currently enrolled in Bangladeshi colleges, at a time when anti-India sentiments are soaring in the country, 16 months after former Hasina sought exile in New Delhi.

Hasina, who was ousted in August 2024 by a popular student-led uprising amid a brutal crackdown by her security forces, has long been seen in Bangladesh as a close ally of India.

In November, a tribunal in Dhaka sentenced Hasina, in absentia, to death for the killings carried out by her security forces in 2024. But despite repeated requests from the interim Bangladeshi government of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, India has so far not agreed to send Hasina back, amplifying sentiments against New Delhi on the streets of Bangladesh.

That anger, say Indian students, has left them feeling vulnerable, especially after a recent incident that has sent shockwaves through the community.

An Indian student from East West Medical College, 16km (10 miles) outside Dhaka, was attacked by local goons on December 19. The attackers snatched the student’s mobile phone and wallet. The incident was recorded on a security camera, and the video spread rapidly across the student community, triggering panic and fear among Indian students, many of whom began avoiding public spaces and restricting their movement out of safety concerns.

“The entire student community is shaken,” said Vaibhav, an Indian student who did not want his full name shared because he fears a backlash at his institute. He enrolled at Dhaka National Medical College in 2019, and is now an intern at the hospital attached to the medical school.

“We fear for our safety every day.”

Earlier, Vaibhav said, he and his friends explored almost every corner of Dhaka and nearby cities without hesitation or fear.

Now, that sense of ease has vanished. Vaibhav rarely steps outside, avoids local markets and common spaces, and even inside the hospital, he is cautious while speaking to patients.

He hides his Indian identity. “I think twice before saying anything in public now, one wrong word can make you a target,” he said.

Though he was never interested in politics, he now constantly checks news updates to assess the situation. “Every night, we go to sleep unsure of what the next day might bring,” Vaibhav added.

Each day of the internship feels like time to be endured, as he waits for the moment he can return home.

The lure of Bangladesh

Every year, more than two million Indian students apply for fewer than 60,000 seats in government-run medical colleges in their own country.

India has hundreds of private medical colleges, too, which offer an additional 50,000 seats. But this still means that almost 19 out of 20 aspirants end up without a shot at medical school. And the high fees charged by private Indian medical schools – anywhere between $78,000  and $166,000 for the full course – mean they are out of reach for students like Khan, whose father is a government employee.

Instead, the family opted for Bangladesh, where private undergraduate medical programmes are comparatively cheaper, with total course costs ranging between $38,000 and $55,000.

This also involved sacrifice: Khan’s father spent nearly all of his life savings to get his son into college.

According to Khan, life in Bangladesh was stable when he arrived in early 2024. However, the situation deteriorated rapidly after the protests against Hasina broke out. “We started feeling unsafe. I desperately wanted to go back home,” he recalled.

When internet services were suspended as security forces cracked down on protesters in the summer of 2024, Khan went to Dhaka airport to book a ticket in person. “I spent two nights at the airport. All flights were full,” he said, adding that he eventually managed to fly to Kolkata in eastern India after two days.

Khan stayed in India for several months before returning to Bangladesh in October. By then, he said, everything felt different: classes were disrupted, exams delayed and insecurity lingered. “It felt like something had changed completely,” he said.

Faisal Mahmud, the press minister at the Bangladesh High Commission, said that in recent weeks, the Bangladeshi government had “stepped up its vigilance to maintain law and order, as a national election is scheduled to take place in just over a month”.

“This has included the deployment of the maximum number of law enforcement personnel, alongside members of the armed forces, who were earlier granted magistracy powers to help ensure public security and protect both citizens and foreigners,” he told Al Jazeera in a statement.

But the leadup to Bangladesh’s election, scheduled for February 12, has also seen a surge in political violence, anti-India rhetoric and a growing sense of fear among students.

A brief lull, and a fresh storm

After months of uncertainty, the situation in Bangladesh had begun to stabilise, say students. But the calm was shattered on December 15, when Sharif Osman Hadi, a prominent leader of Bangladesh’s 2024 student-led uprising, who had taken publicly anti-India positions, was killed by bikers. Bangladeshi police have said that Hadi’s killers have crossed over into India.

Since the killing, a Hindu Bangladeshi man has been lynched, and India had to temporarily close down visa services at some diplomatic missions in Bangladesh because of major protests outside.

As an Indian Hindu, Vaibhav said that he feels particularly vulnerable. He recalled a viva in college after Hasina’s ouster, where he said the examiner’s tone changed, and became much harsher, once they realised where he was from, and the faith he practised.

Since August 2024, minority rights groups in Bangladesh say that attacks on religious minorities, especially Hindus, have gone up. Some of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies over the past 12 years, which multiple international rights groups have criticised as discriminatory against Muslims, have also led to anger in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi government under Yunus, however, insists that the attacks against Hindus in the country have been motivated by politics, not religion. Traditionally, many Bangladeshi Hindus have supported Hasina’s Awami League party.

Still, for students like Khan and Vaibhav, giving up on their education in Bangladesh is not an option.

“We have put in too much money and time to walk away,” Vaibhav said.

He urged both governments to intervene. “We are living in constant fear. Nights are sleepless. This has turned into a nightmare,” he said.

Mahmud from the Bangladesh High Commission said that the law-and-order situation has not worsened to the extent of posing a threat to lives, especially those of foreign nationals. He added that, overall, conditions remain largely stable, with crime levels broadly consistent with the period before 2014.

“Additional precautionary measures have been put in place as part of heightened vigilance ahead of the election,” he said in his statement.

However, Jitendra Singh, the president of the All India Medical Students’ Association (AIMSA), a national student body that represents the interests of medical students across India, said the organisation has received hundreds of distress calls and emails from Indian students enrolled in medical colleges across Bangladesh.

The students, he said, were “deeply shaken and scared”, adding that AIMSA had written to Modi about the concerns over the safety of Indian students in Bangladesh. “We have requested the prime minister and the Ministry of External Affairs to intervene immediately and treat the safety and security of Indian students as an absolute priority.”

He said that AIMSA had asked the Modi government to consider evacuating Indian students from Bangladesh if their security is threatened.

A degree in waiting

Repeated protests, internet shutdowns and prolonged unrest have also severely disrupted academic timelines.

Mohammad, a resident of Indian-administered Kashmir and a student at Dhaka National Medical College, said he enrolled in 2018 and had expected to graduate by 2024. However, his graduation was derailed by the anti-Hasina protests in 2024.

Classes and exams were postponed, and some students went back to India before returning months later. Now, a year later, he said, We are [still] stuck here, even though we should have completed our degrees by now.”

Like Vaibhav, Mohammad requested that his full name not be revealed, as he fears retribution from college authorities.

Students like him, he said, had already suffered because of disruptions to the COVID-19 pandemic. “First, COVID delayed our studies, then political unrest. Now, there is nowhere to go – except to wait,” Mohammad said.

The uncertainty over the future, he said, has taken a toll on students’ mental health.

“No one knows what will happen next, and fear is always there,” he said.

Amid the rise in anti-India sentiment, several colleges have imposed tighter movement restrictions on students.

Khan said Indian students now largely stay on their college campus and go only to nearby local markets. According to him, hostel curfews have also been advanced sharply.

“Earlier, the hostel gates used to close at 10pm. Now, they shut as early as 8pm,” he said, adding that college authorities have issued strict instructions not to venture out late at night or move beyond the immediate vicinity of the campus. “We don’t go outside late any more. We lock ourselves inside the hostels by or before 8pm.”

He said the early curfews have turned hostels into spaces of confinement rather than rest. Even routine movements now carry anxiety, with students constantly alert to what might be happening outside the campus gates.

“There is a constant fear that if something goes wrong, we will have no one to turn to,” Khan said, adding that the uncertainty has left many students tense and unable to focus fully on their studies.

It is very different from early 2024, when he first arrived on campus.

“Back then, the college felt like a second home. Now it feels like a jail,” he said.