United States Navy SEALs shot and killed several North Korean civilians during a botched mission in 2019 to plant a listening device in the nuclear-armed country, reportedly approved by US President Donald Trump, a leading US news outlet reports.
The New York Times reported on Friday that the classified mission was carried out by the US Navy’s SEAL Team 6 during high-stakes diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang in early 2019.
The elite special forces unit – the same one that killed former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011 – was tasked with covertly going ashore in North Korea and planting a listening device to spy on the country’s leadership.
But working in the dead of night with blackout communications, a series of errors led to civilians – several North Koreans reportedly diving for shellfish – inadvertently coming across the US special forces as they splashed ashore.
The SEALs opened fire, killing all those on board a small fishing vessel, the Times report said, without specifying the number of casualties.
Officials familiar with the mission told the Times that the US soldiers “pulled the bodies into the water to hide them from the North Korean authorities”. One source described how SEAL members “punctured the boat crew’s lungs with knives to make sure their bodies would sink”.
The Times said it gained knowledge of the botched mission through interviews with dozens of people, “including civilian government officials, members of the first Trump administration and current and former military personnel with knowledge of the mission”.
All spoke on condition of anonymity due to the mission’s classified status, the news outlet said. It added that several people said their decision to provide details was out of concern that the US military’s special operations failures are “often hidden by government secrecy”.
Sources said President Trump, during his first term in office, gave the mission its final go-ahead.
Trump denied any knowledge of the operations when questioned by reporters about the report on Friday.
“I could look, but I know nothing about [it],” Trump said.
“I’m hearing it now for the first time,” he said.
US officials said it was “unclear” whether Pyongyang ever pieced together what had happened in 2019.
North Korea did not make any public statements about the deaths of civilians at the time and has yet to comment on the story published by the Times.
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