Senior lawmakers said US defence secretary Pete Hegseth may have committed war crimes by allegedly ordering a strike on surviving crew members of a suspected Venezuelan drug smuggling vessel in the Caribbean in September.

Democratic senators Tim Kaine and Mark Kelly, as well as Republican congressman Mike Turner, suggested on Sunday that Hegseth may have broken international law following US media reports that he ordered all those aboard the vessel be killed after an initial strike left two survivors.

“If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the [Department of Defense’s] own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance,” Kaine, a Democrat senator from Virginia, told CBS Face the Nation on Sunday.